Spain: A Spectacular Landing – With Robots (1981)
By Manuel Ramirez - Red Nacional de Corresponsales
From the files of Ignacio Darnaude
1981 started the same way that 1980 ended. If throughout this series we have related numerous experiences in the UFO field, there are still days in which the media does not surprise us with new sightings or spectacular landings. Following the flap of December 1980, during which the EFE news agency tells us there were sightings in many parts of Spain, there was a considerable drop the following February. However, that same month, on the night of the 12th-13th, the “Pueblo” newspaper reported that a UFO landed in Fuentecén (Burgos) and witnesses were able to see a small robot emerging from its interior. Fuentecén, according to “Pueblo”, is some 17 kilometers from Aranda del Duero heading toward Valladolid. The witnesses were Luis Domínguez, his wife and his child. Contact took place around four thirty in the morning, and it is Mr. Domínguez himself who told the story to the newspaper.
“We own a drinking establishment and we closed early that night. I was leaving the house when I saw two red lights level with the ground. I approached them – they appeared to be some 150 meters distant – thinking they were the lights of car. But I saw them rise into the air, and shortly after watched them descend once more. I headed home with my wife, and with the lights off, we looked through the window. We saw the object made a strange rotation, and couldn’t tell if it was solid. I told my wife to go get our child, since it would be good for him to see this. She went for him.”
When asked by a reporter whether the object was motionless, Luis Dominguez said no, that it moved backwards and sideways with undulating movements. “The three of us saw these things. My wife decided to go to bed later.”
The object, according to the main witnesses of the sighting, let go what appeared to be a rocket at certain intervals, lighting up the area like daylight.
“We saw all this for over half an hour, and shortly after the vehicle touched ground, we could hear footsteps. We saw what you might term a robot, about a meter forty tall and some sixty centimeters wide. It was a square robot. We couldn’t tell whether it had a head or arms. It had an overall metallic appearance. We saw that it stood near our fence, a meter from the house. We have a small dog that barks all the time. The robot was imitating the dog’s bark, albeit slowly. At that point I stopped watching through the kitchen window and went to the bathroom window, as there’s a small window there from which all that was going on could be seen better. In fact, I was able to view the robot in detail. First I was scared. I had goosebumps and a strange sensation. After watching the whole thing for nearly an hour, I felt no fear whatsoever. Then I asked my son: “Do you know where the flashlight is?” I found it and armed myself with a hunting knife against anything that might happen. I unlatched the door, and upon opening to go out, I noticed the robot had disappeared and that the vehicle was rising, only to hide behind a stand of trees to the right of our home. The vehicle made a strange noise, like the one made by high-voltage wires. We probably saw the robot for twenty minutes. I was able to tell by then that it had no head or arms. Just a square body, nothing more. We also heard the noise the robot made when it was by the woodpile. It wasn’t a good night and rather dark. I believe that was the reason we could only see its square body. Subsequently, the ship took off and directed flashes toward our home, I was startled to see that the red lights were either close or separated by three meters distance. Then they vanished. We keep a circle of burned wood right where the robot was. In the field, where the vehicle was, we found areas of burned soil and grass. There are also holes. It left some half-moon shaped signs in its wake.
Finally, reporters from the “Pueblo” newspaper visited the place where the witness claimed having seen the vehicle and the robot. They were able to ascertain that the site was slightly burned, but oddly enough, these scorched remains did not seem to have been produced by a flame, but by a powerful blast of heat that swept over the landscape. No deep burns were evident; the surface was not evenly singed, only where the heat blast had touched it. Reporters also found three deep, circular holes, approximately thirty centimeters long and two wide. There was a distance of a meter and a half between them, and they were diagonal, slanted, running up and down. They looked like the three points of support of a tripod.
[Translation (c) 2015 S. Corrales, IHU]
Supplementary Note: As fate would have it, author and journalist J.J. Benítez would also revisit the Fuentecén “robot” in his book La Quinta Columna (The Fifth Column, which yours truly endeavored to translate back in the very early ‘90s). Benítez paid a visit to the witness in later years, presenting the following interview with Luis Domínguez:
“It was around two thirty or three in the morning. We closed the bar, and as I headed home, I saw some red lights right there, in the field. I was alone and the first thing that came to mind that they were car taillights. There had been serveral thefts in the town at the time, so thinking that bandits could be involved, I walked in that direction. But when I came within a hundred meters, hell, the lights rose into theh air, making a weird turn to the right! I was frozen. That “thing” was silent and descended again, landing in the field. I still get goosebumps just thinking about it. I ran away from there. I woke up my wife and we both watched it from the kitchen window with the lights out.”
“I was scared from the start,” added his wife. “It was weird, very weird. Besides, the dog barked like mad. I did everything within my power to keep Luis from going back outside.”
“In fact,” continued the head of household, “I was willing to rile up the whole town. That was worth seeing. No sooner did it move back, it also moved sideways, always with an undulating motion. We also woke up my son José Francisco. Me and the kid were dying of curiosity while fear was killing my wife.”
Benítez’s interview also collected more specific information on the bizarre robot.
“Then there was that thing…fifteen meters from the window and on the other side of the fence. It looked like a box, or more precisely, like a washing machine: square and made of metal. It protruded over the fence by about one fourth. That’s how I figured it was about a meter something tall, maybe 1.40 and 1.50 meters. I told the kid not to move and I went upstairs for a better look. In fact, it was wide, some sixty or seventy meters thick and just like a washing machine or small icebox. I didn’t see anything else. No head, no feet, no arms… I went back down at full speed and asked my son to get the flashlight, telling him not to turn on the lights. Then I grabbed my hunting knife and opened the door, intending to approach the fence. No sooner did I step outside the door did I hear a sound similar to the sparking noise made by high voltage wires. The “box” had vanished. But the red lights remained on the ground. They rose into the air again in a matter of seconds, vanishing into the treeline. We never saw them again.”