The 22 June 1976 Canary Islands event is one of the wildest UFO stories. I had no idea about it until I watched The Basement Office, episode 10 (2 June 2020).
Watching their segment inspired me to research this event further, but what I found were disappointing errors in the way the story is retold that make it appear far more fantastic than it probably was.
What’s certain is that it was a mass sighting of an aerial phenomena. On a clear starry night strange lights were seen in the sky from the Canary Islands. Observers were in a wide area over several of the Islands. Crew on a navy ship, Atrevida, located three miles south of Fuerteventura saw it. There were probably very many more witnesses than the Spanish Government was able to interview for their official report.
The Physicians report
The most sensational aspect of the story is an observation made by Dr. Don Francisco-Julio Padrón León and his taxi driver Santiago del Pino. They were driving from the town of Guía to visit a patient in the mountainous area of Las Rosas.
The official report includes statements from the two men. Dr. Padrón claims to have seen a transparent spherical craft containing two tall figures dressed in red. He describes the beings in exacting anatomical detail.
The Basement office segment describes this part of the sighting, claiming seven witnesses, and repeatedly referring to the lights as an “orb”.
“…inside the orb he (Dr. Francisco Padrón León) sees two figures, and he wasn’t alone: a couple from the window of their house; a teacher; a police officer; a farmer – they all see two figures inside this giant orb and their descriptions of these entities all match up…”
The Basement Office, episode 10 [21:30]
No one else saw humanoid figures
But the problem is if you read the declassified Spanish government report (available on their website) and the witness statements from the municipal police officer (coded B-05), the farmer (B-09), the couple (B-01) and the teacher (B-02), there’s no mention in any of their statements of them seeing “two figures” or any kind of transparent spherical craft.
The couple (B-01) in Boca-Baranco described a light three times the size of the luna disc that appears to be travelling toward them, but on the part of the questionnaire asking them to describe the object they say no to question 7, which asks if there are any other details of interest about what they saw. Their statement contains no description of humanoid figures or entities.
The municipal police officer (B-05) was 6 km away from the Dr. and the taxi driver on Galder mountain, close to another witness, another taxi driver, (not the one carrying the Dr.) He sees a what looks like a red object, like the tip of an arrow, but makes no mention of “two figures” and he also on the “other details of interest” question answers “no”. You’d think seeing two red giant humanoids inside a sphere might get a look in here, especially coming from a police officer – but it’s not mentioned at all.
The teacher (B-02) was in the town of Agaete roughly 3 km to the west (as the crow flies) of where the Dr and the Taxi driver were.
Looking West toward Tenerife the teacher watches the light in the sky with binoculars and sees a large white transparent circle of light with two beams of equal thickness traversing it from top to bottom, but again there’s no description of “two figures”.
The farmer (B-09), was quite close to where the Dr and the Taxi were and describes seeing “a “circular or parabolic light source”, with a “stripe on the top dome”. Again there is no mention of seeing “figures”.
Of the 13 witness statements that make it into the official government report there are only 3 who say they saw “two figures”. Dr. Padrón, his taxi driver, and a woman. The woman is located in a house in Las Rosas and the Dr. speaks with her after the shock of his sighting. She says she can’t be sure of what she saw.
The very next graphic in the Basement office clip is the source of confusion. It shows three pull quotes with no context or attribution. You might be mistaken for thinking these came from some of these witnesses mentioned in the quote above, (the couple, policeman, farmer or teacher) but in fact two of the quotes come from the taxi driver and one from the woman near the house that the doctor is travelling to – the same woman who says she’s not sure what she saw.
There are no quotes from the other witnesses saying that they saw two figures.
I’m basing these thoughts entirely on the Spanish gov report as a primary source. I’m not aware of other interviews with these witnesses that might show that they all said they saw “two figures” in the way that the Dr and the taxi driver did. It appears The Basement Office relied solely on this report to claim that “they all see two figures” and “their descriptions of these entities all match up”. The report alone doesn’t have any evidence to support this.
That they all saw something is beyond doubt. Otherwise, why would they be included as witnesses? And while there are aspects of their statements which do “match up” to some extent, none relate to giant aliens in a transparent aerial craft.
Likely explanations for the sighting
There’s been some analysis of the sighting and its likely explanation.
In particular Vincente-Juan Ballester Olmos and Ricardo Campo Perez revisit work they started in the early 1980s1 and make a strong case2 for it being the launch of two Poseidon missiles from submarines positioned many hundreds of kilometres to the West of the Canary Islands.
The Giants of Galdar3 by Manuel Borraz gives an overview of the events on 22 june, 1976, but also shows how they fit in with other reports of UFOs around the Canary Islands produced by the Spanish government.
In 2015 former NASA space engineer Jamer Oberg, wrote a presentation Mispercieving Missiles4 that includes images of far distant multi-stage rockets producing otherworldly scenes, often with intense blues very similar to what was described on 22 June, 1976.
I’m not a rocket scientist and you probably aren’t either, so I recommend anyone interested in this case to read these articles in full to see just how compelling their explanation for the UFO sighting is.
More official UFO reports from the Canary Islands
The 22 June 1976 report is the second of four closely related reports into strange phenomena conducted between 1974 and 1979. They were produced by the Spanish Government and are now all declassified. They can also be downloaded from their website.5
| Report code number | Event date |
| 01/75 | 24 Nov 1974 |
| 01/76 | 22 June 1976 |
| 02/76 | 19 Nov 1976 |
| 01/79 | 05 Mar 1979 |
The reports use roughly the same methodology, coded questionnaires with open ended sections. They rank witnesses quality and reliability based on their occupation. They include meteorological reports, flight details from local airports, etc, and all include the familiar proposal to establish an “Aerial Phenomena Study Center”.
What’s interesting is how they all draw the same general conclusion – despite containing evidence and counter arguments within them that suggests all the sightings had a prosaic explanation.
For example, this note in the 5 March 1979 report from an air force general’s opinion that the phenomena were Soviet weapons tests. This expert opinion rarely features in retellings of these sightings.
The reports all conclude with:
“After analysing this phenomenon, exhausting the possibilities of its cause, we have to seriously consider the need to accept the hypothesis that ships of unknown origin and driven by an unknown energy move freely through the skies of the Canary Islands.”
Report: 01/79, p.0191-0192 – Google Translate
Giant aliens in a crystalline sphere?
As we can see the witness report from Dr. Padrón describes the journey from Guia to Las Rosas.
If we look at the route described, they drove from his house in Guia, travelled 6 km along the main highway between Las Palmas toward Agaete, before turning off left onto a local road that climbs uphill and ends in the area named Las Rosas.
There were three people in the taxi but only two witnesses
Dr Padrón and his taxi driver said the object containing the two figures was 15 – 20 metres in front of them and illuminated by the car headlights. The taxi driver said he thought the object might be resting on the ground. Yet the third person in the rear of the car said his view of the “25 metre wide by 20 metre tall” object was obscured by the hood of the car. How is this possible?
Assuming that this road hasn’t changed much in the 48 years and still looks like it does on Google Earth today, the direction of travel for the Taxi up hill to Las Rosas is South East, the opposite direction to the lights that are being observed by the other witnesses who are looking North West toward Tenerife.
It should also be noted that while on the highway their their view NW toward Tenerife would have been obscured by mountains.
Where were they when they saw the “orb”?
Turning left off the highway the road climbs up into the mountains as Dr. Padrón describes. There’s a very tight right hand turn toward its end and a steep slope. The Dr. says their encounter begins “toward the end of this local road”. This sharp turn would have suddenly oriented the car to face directly toward Tenerife. It would then have matched the point of view of the other witnesses.
If this is correct, the 13 witnesses who gave statements for the official report were looking in the same direction and at the same single phenomenon. However, just two of them (the Dr. and the Taxi driver) interpreted it in a wildly different way – as giant aliens in a crystalline sphere.
Rear view mirror
Perhaps the most telling remark in Dr. Padrón’s statement above is when he says his taxi driver had been observing the big ball of light “for a while”. The only way this could have occured is if the driver could see it in his rear view mirror as they were driving up the hill in the opposite direction to the lights. Dr Padron only saw it himself when they turned almost 180° around the corner.
How is it possible that the third person didn’t see the “orb”?
The other witnesses in various locations around Gran Canaria describe the light as close to the horizon, estimates range from between 10 and 30 degrees. So, if the taxi is on on an incline (~3%) at this point on their journey, their elevated position has them looking over Gran Canaria toward Tenerife. The ball of light close the the horizon would be below the line of the car hood and so just out of sight to the person sitting a couple of feet behind in the rear of the car.
Above is a composite image using the map data from Google Earth for the evening of 22 June, 1976, at the time of the sighting. It shows the probable location of the taxi on a tight turn toward Las Rosas. It includes an illustration from the official report showing the position of the lights as they were witnessed rising over Tenerife island.
The only known photograph of the event, which is claimed to show the transparent sphere, was taken at Playa Del Ingles, Maspalomas on the South side of Gran Canaria island.
It should be noted that Dr. Padrón and his taxi driver were some 40 km north of where this photo was taken.
The diagonal light is thought to be a lens artefact.
Everyone loves orbs!
The story about giant aliens in a transparent bubble craft is an irresistible yarn to spin, and there are others who retell the story with even more sensational, yet unsupported, detail.
One youtube video6 boldly claims multiple witnesses saw the two figures in red suits. It cites Don Berliner’s official looking Unidentified Flying Objects Briefing Document: The Best Available Evidence.7
That book was published in 1995, a year after the Spanish Government declassified its reports and is neither a “briefing document” nor does it offer any new details that don’t already appear in the Spanish government’s report. Yet, it’s used to support a claim that “a grand total of 11 witnesses” saw the two figures in a transparent craft.
They even include a fanciful recreation:
However, there’s simply no evidence that anyone else other than the Dr., the Taxi driver, and the woman reported seeing two figures or entities or that the scene looked anything at all like the image above.
Science Fiction
What there is evidence of are numerous examples in science fiction that depict figures, sometimes wearing tight-fitting red suits, operating the levers of some mysterious spherical transparent machine.
The covers of Hugo Gernsback’s Wonder Stories alone contain several examples. These were published decades earlier.
Mark Pilkington on the back page of Magonia No.59, 1997, points us to another example from a 1939 Flash Gordon comic strip8 featuring an uncannily similar bubble-shaped craft. It has operable levers, a central tower, some shapes that could be “consoles” and two figures in dashing tight-fitting red outfits.
Paredolia
I suggest the Dr. when suddenly turned to face the atmospheric effects of a distant missile launch had a moment of gripping paredolia, possibly inspired by such science fiction imagery. He was so convinced by the illusion that he influenced the driver (and to some extent the woman) to see it too. Like someone saying “hey that cloud looks like an elephant” and you (feeling obliged to be supportive or deferential) offer “yeah an elephant in a tutu”.
Similar to this:
☁️ Endonezya'nın Nabire kasabasında kaydedilen bu ilginç görüntüde duaya durmuş insan suretini andıran bir bulut görülüyor.
— Biltek Plus (@biltek_pluss) June 3, 2020
📽️ IG: ephy_89 pic.twitter.com/jHQTQ05mFc
Footnotes
- https://www.academia.edu/16027101/Identificados_Los_OVNIS_de_Canarias_fueron_misiles_Poseidon ↩︎
- https://cufos.org/PDFs/IUR%20issues/IUR%20Vol.%2029%20No.%204.pdf ↩︎
- https://www.academia.edu/43047669/Los_gigantes_de_G%C3%A1ldar_y_los_avistamientos_canarios ↩︎
- https://satobs.org/seesat_ref/misc/misperceiving_missiles.pdf ↩︎
- https://bibliotecavirtual.defensa.gob.es/BVMDefensa/exp_ovni/i18n/consulta/resultados_ocr.do ↩︎
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ3btBNa8Bg&t=0s ↩︎
- https://archive.org/details/ufobriefingdocum0000berl/page/90/mode/2up ↩︎
- https://archive.org/details/flash-gordon-1934-1947/Flash%20Gordon%20S013%20-%20Ice%20Kingdom%2812%20Mar%201939%20-%2007%20Apr%201940%29/page/n40/mode/1up ↩︎
