Expediente — Avistamiento en Menorca (24 October 1978)

Brief

Only the title page of this 36-page expediente has extractable text; the remaining 35 pages are scanned images. The cover sheet identifies the file as Expediente No. 781024, places the incident at Menorca on 24 October 1978, and lists the custodial authority as the Biblioteca Central del Ejercito del Aire (BCEA) at the Cuartel General del Ejercito del Aire in Madrid. The war.gov catalog characterizes this as a frequently-cited 1970s case with both military and civilian witnesses reporting a luminous object — a dual-observer profile consistent with higher-grade Spanish Air Force OVNI investigation protocols.

Metadata

Agency

Ejército del Aire / Ministerio de Defensa

Release

1978-10-24

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

36 pages

Classification

UNCLASSIFIED

Tags

luminous object, 1978, Menorca, Balearic Islands, OVNI, military observer, civilian observer, Spanish Air Force declassification

Key points

• The official expediente number is 781024, encoding the incident date directly (year 78, month 10, day 24).p.1
• The incident location is Menorca, Balearic Islands.p.1
• The incident date on the cover sheet is 24 October 1978.p.1
• The custodial institution is the Biblioteca Central del Ejercito del Aire (BCEA) at Romero Robledo 8, Planta Primera, 28071 Madrid.p.1
• The file is formally categorized as 'Avistamiento de Fenomenos Extraños (Expedientes OVNI)' — the Spanish Air Force's official OVNI case classification header.p.1

Most interesting

• Spain's Ejercito del Aire began declassifying its OVNI files in 1992, making it one of the first military services in the world to formally release UFO case files to the public.
• The expediente numbering system encodes the incident date: 781024 = year 78, month 10, day 24 — allowing instant chronological sorting without a separate date field.
• Menorca is the easternmost of the main Balearic Islands, sitting in a strategically active air corridor between the Iberian Peninsula and the Italian coast that saw substantial Cold War-era military traffic.
• The Biblioteca Virtual de Defensa, the original digital host for this file series, made the full Spanish OVNI archive publicly searchable before the 2026 US disclosure wave — a rare instance of proactive military transparency predating international pressure.
• The catalog's dual-observer characterization (military and civilian) is significant: Spanish Air Force OVNI methodology typically assigns a more formal investigation tier to cases where service personnel corroborate civilian reports.