by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

In the course of researching UFO cases in Spanish speaking countries, one is bound to run into Scott Corrales and Inexplicata: The Journal of Hispanic UFOlogy. It exists today as a website, but in the fall of 1998, Corrales put out the first print version. In issue number 3, put out in the spring of 1999, Corrales celebrates the public reception of the first two issues and notes that there were 1800 visitors to the inexplicata.com website. In that issue is an article by Javier Garcia Blanco headlined “Roadside Encounters: UFOs, Aliens and Missing Time,” that Corrales promises, “does for driving what Spielberg’s Jaws did for swimming: you won’t want to get behind the wheel!” Blanco is credited with being the editor (along with Angel Briongos Martinez) of the Spain-based magazine Declasificado and the director of LACIP.

The first case Blanco goes into is that of “veteran radio personality” Pedro Mateo and his wife, Gloria Jiménez. According to him, Mateo described what he said happened to him and his wife on June 26, 1977, after explaining, “I have it etched upon my mind because we were flying to Dusseldorf that day, and most of what happens to me I write in a notebook.” He said that after leaving Zaragoza at around 5:00 a.m., they were just past the town of Los Garrigues after sunrise when they saw a disk-shaped object off in the distance. He wasn’t “overly concerned” at that point, but got scared when it proceeded to move quickly and silently towards them.

It stopped above the car and Mateo’s description of its size appears at the top of the article: “That thing had the side of eight cars or more. In other words, when it was on top of us, it looked like a skyscraper…” He saw a sign for a gas station 1000 meters away and sped up to 160 kph. He said, “Seconds later, we noticed the object disappearing the same way we saw it arrive.”

According to Mateo, when they got to the station, it was “very odd.” It had “two posts and a broken-down shed, with the kind of pump one sees in American stations.” A 1.9- meter-tall man dressed in faded blue coveralls came over and when they asked him if he had seen anything unusual, he said he hadn’t. They weren’t able to see his face because he covered it with something that looked like a sandwich. When he realized they weren’t buying gas, he left.

On their drive home after their trip, they put a cassette tape in the car’s player to listen to some music and heard nothing. They tried other tapes and found they had all been erased, and when they got home, they found they couldn’t record on them. Mateo’s bifocals were missing from the glove compartment and later, the car’s roof, and hood on the passenger side, which had been red, turned pink. The couple also found a “strange wart” on each of their genitals after reading a book which, from the description, was probably John Fuller’s 1966 book, An Interrupted Journey. Later, they found that the gas station where they stopped never existed.

According to Blanco, another couple, Alberto Ballerin and Maria Josef Torres, were heading for their home in Monzón on April 2, 1976. They were on highway N-240 going through Angües when they saw an object heading towards them in the other lane moving at about 55 kph. It was shaped “like a flattened pear,” about 3.5 meters tall by 7-8 meters wide and moving “as if riding the waves.”

The object passed them, giving off sparks, and then rose up into the air and moved out of sight. The couple then found themselves “in front of the San Román parador,” with no memory of passing by the bridge and the town of Lascellas before it. They were missing fifteen minutes. They reported they felt “a great sense of calm, tranquility and well-being” for a few days afterwards and that their car ran better, “and even brakes better.”

Blanco then describes two cars being chased by UFOs: one driven by Jésus Garcia in 1995, who reported radio interference, and the other driven by Ana Casamayor in July of that year. Garcia reported a rectangular object with blinking multi-colored lights, and Casamayor reported a metallic disk.

After this, there is a report from Zaragoza. According to Blanco, on November 1, 1968, five recruits (Francisco Marti Cuatrtero and four others not named) were heading back after being away on a pass. On the Los Monegros road, they saw what they thought was the Sun coming up but then realized that the Sun was on the opposite horizon. Described as a “luminous disc,” it came closer, and when it was half a kilometer away, the car engine and radio shut off, and the headlights dimmed. The men later noticed that their watches had all stopped at the same time.

The object is described as being as big as a bullring and is said to have landed 500 meters to their left and remained there silently for three minutes. According to Blanco, it then rose up, suddenly accelerated, and was quickly out of sight. At this point, the car’s engine and radio started up, and the headlights returned to normal. Once they were back, they reported the incident to their superiors and were subjected to “detailed questioning.”

Finally, there is a case (Blanco doesn’t give a dater) from Burgo de Ebro, “a small town located a certain distance from Zargoza.” According to Blanco, Balthasar Cavero Andreu “a humble shepherd,” was headed home on his motorcycle after sunset. Halfway there, he saw three men who were standing on the roadway. He got to within 40-50 meters of them and thought “It must be the Guardia Civil.”

Andreu turned on his high beams and the three “men” started running downhill. He followed them for about 200 meters and after coming around a curve, didn’t see a trace of them. He described them as 1.8 meters tall, dressed in white, and having blue bands on their backs that ran from their shoulders to their waists.

While this might not seem all that strange, he reported that two days later, he went to check on his sheep and sheep dogs and saw that they were all huddled against a wall. He then saw two men dressed the same as the ones from before “flattened against a wall as if to avoid detection.” He ran away and called the Guardia Civil, but when they arrived, the men were gone.

In his conclusion Blanco comments that these cases and thousands of others like them “evince the phenomenon’s interest in the human being and a desire to let itself be seen.” As for the purpose of such encounters, he says, “Who knows?”