The Green Man of Talavera la Real

Talavera la Real Air Base lies about 13 km from Badajoz, in Extremadura, close to the Portuguese border. In 1976 it was home to the Ala 23 training wing. Its fuel storage area ran along the outer perimeter wall, beside a stand of eucalyptus trees. The men guarding it were young conscripts.

Friday 12 November 1976. About 01:45. José María Trejo and Juan Carrizosa Luján stood in sentry boxes about 60 m apart. They heard what they took for radio interference. It grew into a piercing, painful, high-pitched whistle. Five minutes. Then silence. Soon afterwards an intense bright light lit the sky for about 15 seconds.

The guard corporal ordered the perimeter checked. José Hidalgo arrived with a German shepherd guard dog, and the three men walked the outer wall. Near the eucalyptus trees, branches snapped. The dog was released towards the sound. It came back staggering, whimpering and apparently sick.

Trejo felt watched, and turned. About 15 m away, near the wall, stood a human-shaped figure about 3 m tall. It was made of many small points of green light, brighter at the edges, with an outline like a bobbin or spindle. A small head sat under something like a helmet. The arms were very long. No hands or feet could be seen.

Trejo tried to raise a weapon and felt a sudden physical block, then fell to the ground dizzy. Hidalgo and Carrizosa opened fire, about 40 to 50 rounds. The figure flashed and disappeared. The whistle returned for 10 to 15 seconds. Then it stopped.

The next morning about 50 men searched the area. They found no cartridge cases and no bullet strikes on the wall, though the Air Force reportedly confirmed the rounds had been fired. A few days later Trejo collapsed in the base dining hall, barely able to see. One account says Trejo was admitted to the Air Force Hospital in Madrid on 30 November 1976 with a diagnosis of "nervous imbalance."

J. J. Benítez published the first known account, "Encounter at Talavera," in Flying Saucer Review in February 1978, translated by Gordon Creighton. Benítez said the story came directly from the witnesses. Press reports place the case among Air Force UFO files declassified in the 1990s and held in the Biblioteca Virtual de Defensa. The Air Force closed the file without establishing what happened. Journalist Samuel Hernández said of the releases: "many names are crossed out, there is a lot of censorship."

Researcher Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos proposed a hallucination strengthened by fear and confusion. Sceptics point to tense young conscripts guarding a sensitive site in the dark, and note that a dog reacting badly to noise or gunfire proves nothing. Accounts also disagree on the number of witnesses, Trejo's first name and who fired.

Carrizosa and Hidalgo have reportedly died. Trejo, named José Manuel Trejo in later interviews, has kept giving talks into the 2020s as the only living direct witness. The case has been retold by Charles Lear, reportedly on Iker Jiménez's Cuarto Milenio, and on many podcasts. In Spain, it is still the story of "el hombre verde." The green man.