The Green Man of Talavera la Real

Talavera la Real air base sits near Badajoz, in Extremadura. It shares its runway and control tower with Badajoz civil airport and is home to Ala 23, the fighter pilot training wing. In November 1976 Spain was in the uneasy years after Franco. The threat of ETA attacks kept sentries on edge.

The night of 11 to 12 November 1976. About 01:45. Two conscripts, José Manuel Trejo and Juan Carrizosa Luján, stood in separate sentry posts at the fuel depot, about 60 metres apart. They heard noises like radio interference. The noises became a piercing, high-pitched whistle that hurt their ears. It lasted about five minutes.

The two men took their Z-62 submachine guns and searched the area. The whistle returned for about five more minutes. Then a brightness like a lit flare lit up the area in the direction of Badajoz for 15 or 20 seconds before it vanished.

Soldier José Hidalgo arrived with a German Shepherd. The three men walked along the perimeter wall with loaded weapons. After about 300 metres they felt a whirlwind of air. A eucalyptus branch snapped nearby. They let the dog go. It came back staggering, as if dizzy. It happened several times. It never barked.

Trejo felt a chill. He sensed someone behind him. He turned. About 15 metres to his left stood a luminous green humanoid figure, about three metres tall. It seemed to consist entirely of small points of light, brighter at the edges. A small head that seemed to wear a helmet. A thick body. Long arms held out in a cross. No visible legs.

Trejo tried to fire and could not. He fell to his knees shouting "Down! They'll kill us!" Hidalgo and Carrizosa fired between 40 and 50 rounds. The figure faded like the image on a television screen after it's turned off. The whistle came back for 10 to 15 seconds, then stopped. The base went on full alert.

The next day about 50 men searched the area. Military experts confirmed the weapons had been fired. Yet they found no spent cartridges. There were no bullet marks on the wall behind where the figure had stood. Days later Trejo went blind for a time, collapsed in the mess hall and was hospitalised. Doctors found nothing physically wrong and blamed "a nervous maladjustment". He later recovered.

In later retellings Trejo added more: a cut to the power and phone lines, a dog with singed fur, a pain like a red-hot iron in his breastbone. None of this appears in the first detailed account, written by J.J. Benítez for Flying Saucer Review in 1978.

The Spanish Air Force opened a file, Expediente 761112, and reportedly closed it quickly. It was declassified in the 1990s and heavily redacted. Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, who worked with the Air Force on the declassification, says the base command never treated it as a UFO event. He proposes hallucinatory delirium in one soldier, spread by contagious hysteria, fear and confusion. Others suggest collective suggestion under stress. An unsourced local rumour calls it a prank. Benítez believed the figure was a spacecraft crew member. Trejo believes the being saved his life.

Nearly 50 years on, Trejo still tells the story. Carrizosa and Hidalgo have died. The case keeps coming back on Cuarto Milenio with Iker Jiménez, and on radio and in podcasts, as the green man of Talavera.