Expediente — Avistamiento en Canarias (24 November 1974)

Brief

Expediente OVNI 741124 documents the Ejército del Aire's eight-section investigation into an anomalous phenomenon observed over the Canary Islands on the night of 24 November 1974. Radar operators confirmed the detected objects represented real contacts in space, with propagation conditions good and screen presentation normal, excluding equipment fault or anomalous propagation as explanations — yet neither altitude nor the nature of the objects could be established. A captain at Gando, tasked to observe direction 880 starting at approximately 20:30 hours, subsequently attributed a luminous point in that direction to a fixed star, though his declaration was not formalized until 23 December 1974, nearly a month after the incident. The case is part of the broader Canarias sighting series that contributed to Spain's 1976 EVA-network investigation directives.

Metadata

Agency

Ejército del Aire / Ministerio de Defensa

Release

1974-11-24

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

87 pages

Classification

UNCLASSIFIED (Biblioteca Virtual de Defensa public release)

Programs

Escuadrón de Alerta y Control nº B, EVA-network

Tags

luminous phenomenon, Canary Islands, 1974, radar contact, Spain, EVA-network, Escuadrón de Alerta y Control

Key points

• Radar operators stated the detected objects represented a real existence in space, with propagation described as good and screen presentation normal — explicitly excluding equipment malfunction and anomalous propagation.p.69
• The Escuadrón de Alerta y Control nº B deployed at Tejeda was telephoned at approximately 20:30 hours by the Operations Zone Duty Officer and tasked to monitor direction 880 for any flying object.p.65
• A captain at Gando monitored the reported direction throughout the night and on subsequent evenings, concluding a luminous point was a fixed star — but his visual dismissal does not address the radar contacts.p.65
• The captain's declaration was formalized on 23 December 1974 at Gando, nearly one month after the 24 November incident, indicating a deliberate and extended witness-collection process.p.65
• The table of contents includes 'Informe del Sr. Juez' (Judge's Report) as a formal section, indicating a judicial dimension unusual for routine aerial incident reporting.p.14
• The file was formally received by the Biblioteca Central del Ejército del Aire with a February 1994 stamp, suggesting central institutional archiving nearly two decades after the incident.p.14
• The expediente spans 87 pages but only 12 yield extractable text; the remainder consist of handwritten declarations and scanned materials, limiting independent verification of the full record.p.1

Verbatim

• AVISTAMIENTO DE FENÓMENOS EXTRAÑOS (EXPEDIENTES OVNI)

  p.1

• En Gando a 23 Diciembre de 1.974

  p.65

Most interesting

• The BCEA stamp dates the file's central archiving to February 1994 — roughly twenty years after the incident — suggesting the expediente circulated within the Ejército del Aire's operational chain for two decades before formal library deposit.
• The investigation structure explicitly incorporates a judge's report (Informe del Sr. Juez), implying Spain elevated certain UAP cases to a quasi-legal inquiry, not merely an administrative or operational debrief.
• The radar operator's conclusion that detected objects represented 'a real existence in space' was made while simultaneously acknowledging that neither altitude nor nature could be determined — a combination that places the case outside both instrument-error and conventional misidentification categories.
• The captain's visual conclusion (a fixed star) applies only to his optical observation and was documented a full month after the event; it does not engage with, and cannot resolve, the radar contacts recorded on page 69.
• Only 12 of the file's 87 pages contain machine-readable text; the overwhelmingly handwritten character of the record suggests witness statements were collected in field conditions and never typed before archiving.
• Direction '880' in the duty officer's tasking order is likely a Spanish military sector or bearing code rather than a standard compass heading, pointing toward a defined quadrant of sky over the Canary Islands.
• The 1974 Canarias expediente belongs to a documented series of sightings that directly shaped Spain's 1976 EVA-network investigation directives — giving this case downstream policy significance beyond the incident itself.