The Bardenas Reales Firing Range Lights

The Bardenas Reales is a semi-desert in southern Navarre. Inside it lies an air-to-ground firing range of the Spanish Air Force. On the night of Thursday 2 January 1975, a guard detail was posted at the range's Main Tower. An Auxiliary Tower and a hilltop observatory stood within sight. About 4 km to the north-east lay a target marked "Blanco Nº1".

Around 22:55, a soldier on guard outside the Main Tower noticed a light. He took it for a vehicle's headlight and alerted the guard commander, a corporal. Three more soldiers came out to watch.

It was an intense red light, sometimes joined by a weaker light of the same colour. The men put it between 2 and 5 km away. It stayed motionless for several minutes, then rose, somewhere between 25 and 50 metres. It moved toward the Auxiliary Tower, then turned toward the Main Tower, where the patrol stood. Then it made a 180° turn, gained speed and height, and was gone.

Around 23:10, a second object appeared where the first had been. A First Sergeant in the observatory raised his binoculars.

He saw a shape like an inverted cup, with white lights on its top and bottom. Amber and white lights flashed along its sides. One summary of the military file says it was the size of a truck. It moved slowly in the same direction, reached the Auxiliary Tower, changed course and disappeared. At about 23:30 the lieutenant commanding the range saw the Moon showing through mist where the objects had been, and later drew a sketch of their trajectories.

On 7 January the Third Air Region appointed an investigating judge. Statements were taken the next day, as ABC reported "contradictory versions" and said the file would go to the Air Ministry. The judge's conclusion was striking. The witnesses, he found, "did indeed see something strange, different in its movements and characteristics from presently known aircraft."

On 11 January the file was ordered archived. Lt. Gen. Iribarnegaray put the lights down to the Moon's halo, a star or a nearby tractor. File 750102 was classified Confidential. It was declassified on 13 July 1994 and has been online at the Biblioteca Virtual de Defensa since about October 2016. It is one of only nine declassified Air Force files that remain unexplained.

In 2017 Julio Plaza, writing for Naukas, noted that the Moon rose around 23:30, after the objects had gone. A helicopter fits the hovering and climbing. But no engine noise was heard and no night flight was notified.

Plaza's preferred answer is a vehicle on the perimeter road. Using a LiDAR terrain model, he showed that the stretch of road visible from the Main Tower matches the reported path. Broken ground would make a light blink in and out. He admits two loose ends. The apparent approaches to the towers. And the missing engine sound.

J.J. Benítez says he tracked down the witnesses in 1976 and saw the classified file that October, and he wrote about the case in OVNIs: Documentos oficiales del Gobierno Español (1977). Iker Jiménez and Bruno Cardeñosa later reported a further sighting on 5 January. A soldier named Martínez saw a great beam of light rise above the nearest mountain and seem to land. Troops reportedly found a circular mark about 10 metres across, which the military blamed on poachers. None of it appears in the official file, and Plaza suspects a "psicosis de luces" merged separate sightings into one story.