VALDERAS

Opening

On 2 June 1967 the Madrid papers Informaciones and Pueblo reported a flying saucer over San José de Valderas, a new suburb in Alcorcón, the evening before. Photographs credited to a photographer called "Antonio Pardo", who was never traced, and a second set from anonymous senders showed a disc with the symbol )+( on its underside. Metal tubes stamped with the same symbol were later said to have been found nearby.

The symbol belonged to the UMMO letters, which had been arriving in Madrid since 1966 from writers claiming to be visitors from a planet called Ummo. Their letters had announced a landing near Madrid for that date. In 1977 photo analysts found a suspension thread. In 1993 José Luis Jordán Peña confessed to creating UMMO, and he later explained how he faked the photographs.

Timeline

6 February 1966Two people report a landing at Aluche, also in Madrid. El Caso reports it the next day, mentioning scorched ground. The UMMO letters later claim it.

1966-1967Typed letters signed by "Ummites" reach members of a Madrid circle of UFO enthusiasts around Fernando Sesma that meets at the Café Lion. They describe Ummo as orbiting a star the letters identify as Wolf 424, and they announce a craft landing near Madrid.

1 June 1967, eveningThe reported sighting at San José de Valderas, with a landing said to have followed at Santa Mónica, near a restaurant called La Ponderosa.

2 June 1967Antonio San Antonio's "¿Platillos volantes sobre Madrid?" runs in Informaciones and "¿Un platillo volante?" in Pueblo.

3 June 1967The newspaper Madrid quotes Sesma saying the saucer came from Uranus.

1968Antonio Ribera and Rafael Farriols publish Un caso perfecto ("A perfect case"), defending the photographs.

Spring 1977Claude Poher (Inforespace no. 32, March 1977, and the CUFOS Bulletin) and William Spaulding of Ground Saucer Watch (CUFOS Bulletin) both report image processing that shows a thread above the disc.

23 May 1979An UMMO letter (catalogued as D116) concedes that the Ummites had earlier spread "false proofs".

1993Jordán Peña confesses in La Alternativa Racional no. 29 that he created UMMO.

1996-1998Jordán Peña explains the photographs in detail to journalist Manuel Carballal.

Key figures

José Luis Jordán Peña, a Madrid engineer with a long interest in psychology and parapsychology, often described in the press as a psychologist, was vice-president of the Sociedad Española de Parapsicología. He said UMMO was an experiment in how people come to believe. He also said the name was chosen because UMMO evokes "humo", Spanish for smoke.

Vicente Ortuño, his friend, held the support for the model, according to Jordán Peña's account.

Antonio Ribera, a Spanish writer, was UMMO's best-known promoter. Fernando Sesma ran the circle the letters were sent to.

Claude Poher, a French space engineer who founded GEPAN, the French government's UFO study group, in 1977, and William Spaulding did the 1977 analyses.

Manuel Carballal, a Spanish investigator, recorded Jordán Peña's explanations and tried to trace the witnesses.

Physical and documentary trail

The trail includes the original 1967 press reports, the photographs, the tubes, Ribera and Farriols's book, the 1977 analyses and Jordán Peña's confession and interviews. The tubes turned out to be thermometer cases holding strips of Tedlar, a polyvinyl fluoride film made by DuPont. Jordán Peña said a NASA engineer then in Spain had supplied the Tedlar, and he gave Carballal the die used to stamp the strips.

The photographs have been defended on two grounds. The Guardia Civil examined five original negatives and found them unaltered, and critics noted that Spaulding worked from a second-generation copy. Neither point answers the thread: an unretouched negative can still show a model on a string. Carballal later reproduced the images with a model and a fishing rod. An earlier version of this report said several people saw a disc that evening. Investigators found no direct witness apart from Jordán Peña. Everyone they traced referred them to someone else, to Ribera's book or to the next day's paper.

Things you might not know

• The landing was announced in advance. UMMO letters had told their readers a craft would come down near Madrid, and the newspapers then reported one on the date given.
• The model was small. Jordán Peña said it was about 60 cm across, hung from a thread, and photographed at 1/1000 of a second.
• The grain was deliberate. He said he used fast film and developed it for heavy grain to hide the thread, and cut frames where his helper's hands showed.
• Even the Ummites confessed. A 1979 UMMO letter admitted that earlier "proofs" had been false, saying they had served as cover given how credulous people on Earth were.
• The confession did not end the belief. Some UMMO followers reject it, and Jordán Peña's son, José Luis Jordán Moreno, still disputed it in 2022.

Competing explanations

A genuine UMMO craft. This depends on the letters being genuine and on there being independent witnesses. No independent witness has been found, and the letters' author confessed.

A hoax by Jordán Peña and helpers. The thread found in two separate 1977 analyses, the identification of the tubes as thermometer cases with commercial Tedlar, the advance announcement, the lack of witnesses and the confession all support this.

A false confession. Some defenders argue that Jordán Peña claimed credit for something he did not do. His account includes physical details, including the die for the strips, that are hard to explain unless he made them.

Later life of the case

UMMO remains one of the most elaborate UFO hoaxes on record and still has followers in Spain, France and Latin America. El País revisited the affair in 2019. Valderas is still its best-known image.

Finding

A hoax. The photographs show a small model on a thread, the tubes were thermometer cases with DuPont film, and the person behind the UMMO letters confessed and explained the method, including the die used for the strips. No independent witness to the sighting has ever been found.

What still will not resolve: who else was involved. Jordán Peña named Ortuño for the photographs, but the full circle behind years of UMMO letters has never been documented.