The Ovni de Treviño Photograph: Prudencio Muguruza at Ochate (1981)

Ochate sits in the Condado de Treviño, an enclave of Burgos inside Álava, about 20 km from Vitoria-Gasteiz. Its name has been read as "secret door" or "door of the cold." By the early twentieth century the village was empty. What remained were ruins and the tower of San Miguel Arcángel. You reach it on foot, along a dirt track from Imíruri.

In 1981 it was just a ruin. That was about to change.

Even the date is disputed. Some sources give 24 June 1981. Others give 24 July. One just says summer 1981.

Prudencio Muguruza, a young savings-bank employee from Vitoria, was walking near the village with his hunting dog. He had a modest camera with him, meant for photographing plants. The dog became agitated. Then a bright flash lit up the area. Muguruza photographed what he saw.

Accounts of the image differ. "Una gigantesca esfera de color blanco que parecía impactar contra la torre." A gigantic white sphere that seemed to be striking the tower. Another version has a bluish sphere that descended slowly from the sky. Others describe a kind of glowing ball, or a metallic, shiny sphere like the classic flying saucer. Nobody reported a sound, beings or any effect on the witness.

The film was developed about two months later. A press release followed on 25 September 1981. In January 1982, with help from J. J. Benítez, the image appeared on the cover of Mundo Desconocido under the title "Ovni de Treviño." In April 1982 Muguruza published "Luces en la puerta secreta," which claimed that three epidemics had struck Ochate. That article started the legend of the cursed village.

Muguruza later sold the negative for 500,000 pesetas to a businessman who wanted to make posters. He left the bank, opened an esoteric bookshop, hosted the radio show Entre Dos Mundos and moved toward parapsychology. He went on to suggest that Ochate, Aguillo and Ajarte formed a triangle that might hide an alien base.

On 14 March 1982, El Diario Vasco reported that NASA and the universities of Lejona and Barcelona had certified the photograph as authentic. Other accounts say the Universidad de Bilbao examined it at Benítez's request and reached no conclusion. Magonia later said the NASA claim was false. According to Magonia, the examiner was Col. Colman S. von Kevinczky, founder of ICUFON, a man who "never enjoyed credibility even within the ufological community."

Sceptics gave a simpler answer. Magonia called the object "that brilliant cloud." The blog Misterios del Aire accepted the photo as genuine. It saw a cloud lit up, probably by the Moon, and placed the shot near Aguillo rather than Ochate. Some experts believed the photograph was fake. Gámez accused Muguruza of inventing the story and found that the documents behind the epidemic tale did not exist. The Vitoria researcher Enrique Echazarra called the legend a "montaje." He tracked down a man of about 80 who had lived in Ochate before the Civil War. The man was "very surprised" by the stories.

Iker Jiménez gave Ochate the first episode of Cuarto Milenio in 2005, with Muguruza on the show. In September 2024 the programme came back to the image itself. Every story told about Ochate since grows from this one photograph, taken by one witness, of a light above a tower.