Encounter record / 1971
March 25, 1971. Half past midnight. On the summit of Puig Pení, above the bay of Roses, servicemen at the EVA-4 radar station watched a light low in the sky, where Mars rises. Two nights later a similar light stood still so long that the whole garrison could watch it. One of those nights, something came to the fence. A dark mass, taller than a normal man. A guard opened fire with a CETME rifle and a pistol. A flash blinded a soldier. Decades later, witness Jesús Jofre Milá described a 2.20 metre figure with a glowing triangular emblem on its belt. The question has followed the case ever since. What did they shoot at?
Above the town of Roses, on the Cap de Creus peninsula, the summit of Puig Pení rises to 607 metres. At the top sits a radar dome that locals call "la bola del Pení". US forces built the station under the 1953 agreements between Spain and the United States. When the Americans left in 1964, it passed to the Spanish Air Force. By 1971 it was Escuadrón de Vigilancia Aérea nº 4, EVA-4, manned by young men doing their military service.