Within Balearic UFOs
How the Tamames Sea Mystery Weakened
The Tamames story moved from famous sea mystery to a more doubtful case after later reporting pointed to illuminated parachutists.
On this page
- The lights and radar effects at sea
- How the story became famous
- Why the parachutist explanation matters
Page outline Jump by section
Introduction
The Tamames tanker case is one of the most useful Balearic UFO stories because it shows how a dramatic sea mystery can weaken when later reporting supplies a more ordinary explanation. On 6 February 1979, the Cepsa tanker Tamames was sailing from Alcúdia towards Cartagena when its crew reported yellowish-red lights and strange radar effects in waters near Formentera. Early press coverage framed the event as more than fifty UFOs surrounding the ship for roughly six hours. The official file, later made available through Spain’s Ministry of Defence UFO archive, preserves the ship’s log-based account, but later press follow-up reported that the lights were not unknown craft: they were illuminated parachutists taking part in a Radio Nacional de España programme about military parachuting. That explanation does not cleanly answer every radar detail, but it sharply reduces the case’s value as an unexplained Balearic incident.[Biblioteca Virtual Defensa+2Scribd]bibliotecavirtual.defensa.gob.esOpen source on gob.es.
Why this case still matters in Balearic UFO history
The Tamames story belongs in Balearic UFO history not because it proves anything exotic, but because it sits at the meeting point of several ingredients that often made Spanish UFO cases famous in the late 1970s: trained or duty-bound witnesses, a maritime setting, official paperwork, local and national press attention, and a later corrective explanation. The Ministry of Defence catalogue identifies the case as “Avistamiento de fenómenos extraños en aguas de Baleares: 06 de Febrero de 1979”, a six-page file from the Air Operational Command’s intelligence section, with the archive record noting its place in the declassified UFO collection.[Biblioteca Virtual Defensa]bibliotecavirtual.defensa.gob.esOpen source on gob.es.
Its local importance is also geographic. The incident was reported in waters close to Formentera, often described as about fifteen nautical miles from the island and near the La Mola area in later local coverage. That placed the case within the same broad Balearic cluster that includes aviation reports around Menorca, Mallorca and Ibiza in 1978–79. For a reader trying to understand the islands’ UFO reputation, Tamames is the Balearic sea case that best demonstrates how an impressive first report can later become less mysterious without becoming entirely tidy.[Noudiari.es]noudiari.esDefensa desclasifica un 'Expediente OVNI' ocurrido a 15 millas de FormenteraDefensa desclasifica un 'Expediente OVNI' ocurrido a 15 millas de Formentera
The lights and radar effects at sea
The core event began at 21:17 local time on 6 February 1979. According to the file summary, the Balearic naval commander forwarded a copy of the Tamames logbook after the ship observed yellowish-red lights and radar echoes in Balearic waters. The lights were seen off the port side, about 45 degrees from the bow, with an upward reflection. Because they resembled possible distress signals, the ship altered course towards them in case assistance was needed.[Scribd]scribd.com1979 02 06 Avistamiento en Aguas de Baleares1979-02-06 Avistamiento en Aguas de Baleares | PDF…
That first decision is important. The crew were not initially treating the lights as a paranormal spectacle. They were at sea, saw lights that might have been emergency flares, and responded as mariners. The press later quoted Captain José Luis González saying that, at about nine at night and around fifteen miles from Formentera, lights like flares appeared, yellowish in colour and not static. El País reported his claim that more than fifty UFOs surrounded the vessel for about six hours, but the more sober official summary keeps the language closer to lights and radar effects.[El País]elpais.comOpen source on elpais.com.
The radar element made the case more memorable. The official summary says the radar initially detected no echo; after about fifteen to twenty minutes, the lights went out and the radar screen began showing beams that whitened the display “as a RACON would”. A RACON is a radar beacon used as a navigation aid, so the comparison suggests the crew were describing a strong radar-screen effect rather than simply a visual light in the sky. No distress calls were heard on the ship’s radio channels, and by 23:50 the radar signals had faded and stopped.[Scribd]scribd.com1979 02 06 Avistamiento en Aguas de Baleares1979-02-06 Avistamiento en Aguas de Baleares | PDF…
The second phase came after midnight. At 00:45 the following day, the radar reportedly showed numerous diffuse echoes ahead of the vessel, with two apparently larger returns. The file says these echoes moved in the same direction as the ship but more slowly; after about an hour they had fallen to three or four nautical miles, disappeared, and then reappeared astern or abeam at varying distances. Crucially, the summary adds that no identifying lights were seen even though visibility was good, and that no abnormality was found in the ship’s machinery or instruments.[Scribd]scribd.com1979 02 06 Avistamiento en Aguas de Baleares1979-02-06 Avistamiento en Aguas de Baleares | PDF…
How the story became famous
The Tamames case became famous because the early public version was vivid, simple and alarming: a tanker near Formentera had been surrounded for hours by dozens of UFOs. El País published the story on 9 February 1979 under a headline stating that a ship’s crew claimed to have seen UFOs near Formentera. The article named the vessel, the route, the captain and the broad circumstances, giving the account enough specificity to travel beyond a vague rumour.[El País]elpais.comOpen source on elpais.com.
The press framing also amplified the most dramatic features. The idea of “more than fifty” objects, lights coming to within two miles, and radar screens showing large returns gave the incident a stronger evidential feel than a normal single-witness light-in-the-sky report. Later local summaries repeated the same memorable ingredients: a Cepsa tanker, a route between the Balearics and Cartagena, lights like flares, unexplained radar returns, and a crew that asked about possible military activity but received no useful confirmation at the time.[Noudiari.es]noudiari.esDefensa desclasifica un 'Expediente OVNI' ocurrido a 15 millas de FormenteraDefensa desclasifica un 'Expediente OVNI' ocurrido a 15 millas de Formentera
Yet the fame of the case also rested on a mismatch between what the captain reportedly said and what later UFO retellings implied. Murcia Plaza, drawing on the case tradition, notes that the captain spoke of lights and radar anomalies and did not himself enter the language of UFO belief. That distinction matters. A responsible reading of Tamames should separate the crew’s operational observations from the sensational label that attached itself to the case once newspapers and UFO culture began circulating it.[Murcia Plaza]murciaplaza.comMurcia Plaza…
The case resurfaced in public memory in 2023 for an unexpected reason: a Spanish parliamentary speech compared the politician Ramón Tamames with the tanker of the same name. That prompted fact-checking and archival coverage, which in turn brought the old Formentera story back into circulation. Maldita.es used the occasion to revisit the Ministry of Defence file, the early press reports and the later parachutist explanation, making the case a good example of how old UFO stories can be reinterpreted when archive material and hemeroteca follow-up are read together.[Maldita]maldita.esOpen source on maldita.es.
Why the parachutist explanation matters
The parachutist explanation matters because it changes the status of the Tamames case from a famous unsolved sea mystery to a weakened, partly explained incident. Maldita.es reports that ABC de Sevilla carried an EFE-based follow-up on 10 February 1979 saying the supposed UFOs were in fact parachutists with lights, taking part in Radio Nacional de España’s programme Testigo Directo. RTVE’s own archive page for the programme confirms that in 1979 Testigo Directo covered military parachuting, including the preparation, practice and training of parachutists.[Maldita]maldita.esOpen source on maldita.es.
This is a strong corrective for the visual part of the story. Parachutists descending at night with lights or flares can look strange to distant observers, especially over water or from a moving vessel. Multiple illuminated points can appear, vanish, pair up or seem to shift in formation. If the crew first thought they might be seeing distress flares, that actually fits the parachutist-flare direction better than it fits a structured craft. The explanation also helps explain why the lights were not accompanied by normal ship navigation lights and why the initial display had a flare-like quality.[El País]elpais.comOpen source on elpais.com.
The difficulty is that the parachutist explanation is not equally strong for every part of the account. Later retellings note that the captain reportedly remained unconvinced because the military parachuting activity was associated with the Murcia area, described as the Alcantarilla–San Javier–Balsicas triangle, roughly 150 kilometres from the Tamames position and inland, and because the timing did not seem to match cleanly. That objection does not restore the case as evidence of unknown craft, but it explains why some writers continue to treat the incident as imperfectly closed.[Murcia Plaza]murciaplaza.comMurcia Plaza…
The radar problem is also more complicated than the lights. A visual misidentification can be straightforward; radar effects require more care. The official file compares the radar whitening to a RACON-like effect, reports diffuse echoes, and says no fault was detected in the ship’s machinery or instruments. However, that does not automatically mean solid objects were physically surrounding the tanker. Marine radar can be affected by reflections, propagation conditions, interference, sea clutter, nearby coastlines and equipment behaviour that may not be obvious to a crew in the moment. The file preserves the anomaly, but it does not establish an extraordinary cause.[Scribd]scribd.com1979 02 06 Avistamiento en Aguas de Baleares1979-02-06 Avistamiento en Aguas de Baleares | PDF…
What the case can and cannot support
The strongest evidence in the Tamames file is that something unusual was reported by a working ship’s crew and recorded through official channels. The report was not just pub talk or a later memory. The logbook material was forwarded by the Balearic naval authority, entered into the Air Force UFO file system, and eventually catalogued in the Ministry of Defence archive. That gives the case historical value even if the explanation is mundane.[Biblioteca Virtual Defensa]bibliotecavirtual.defensa.gob.esOpen source on gob.es.
What the case cannot support is the confident claim that an unknown craft, or many unknown craft, surrounded the tanker. The most dramatic early phrase — more than fifty UFOs — comes from press coverage of the captain’s account, not from a technical conclusion that fifty structured objects were verified. The official summary is more restrained: lights, radar echoes, no visible identifying lights for the later radar targets, and no instrument or machinery abnormality detected. That is interesting, but it is not the same as confirmation of extraordinary vehicles.[El País]elpais.comOpen source on elpais.com.
The parachutist reporting also weakens the case because it arrived very soon after the original story. This was not a sceptical reconstruction invented decades later with no connection to the period; it was reported in the immediate press cycle after the incident, and later archival work connected it to RNE’s Testigo Directo material. That makes it harder to treat the Tamames lights as a cleanly unexplained Balearic UFO event.[Maldita]maldita.esOpen source on maldita.es.
Still, a balanced account should not pretend that every detail has been solved with laboratory neatness. The known record leaves open questions about exact positions, line of sight, the distance between the reported parachuting activity and the tanker, and the mechanism behind the radar display. Those uncertainties are reasons for caution, not reasons to revive the strongest UFO reading. The fair conclusion is that Tamames is a historically important but substantially weakened case: visually plausible as illuminated parachutists, technically muddied by radar effects, and over-amplified by the early “fifty UFOs” framing.
The Balearic lesson from Tamames
Tamames is valuable because it teaches a broader lesson about the Balearic Islands’ UFO record. The most memorable cases are not always the most resistant to explanation. A story can involve named witnesses, official paperwork, press attention and dramatic language, yet still become less mysterious when later reporting supplies a plausible human activity nearby.
For the Balearic Islands project, this places Tamames in a different category from cases that remain unresolved mainly because records are too thin. Here the record is not absent: there is a declassified file, early national press coverage, local retrospective reporting, a fact-checking revisit, and an archival link to a radio programme about military parachuting. The result is not a solved case in every technical detail, but a case whose headline mystery has been significantly reduced.[Biblioteca Virtual Defensa+2Maldita]bibliotecavirtual.defensa.gob.esOpen source on gob.es.
That is why the parachutist explanation matters so much. It does not merely offer a possible cause; it changes how the case should be used. Tamames should not be presented as one of the strongest Balearic examples of unknown craft at sea. It is better understood as a cautionary case: a dramatic maritime sighting near Formentera that became famous through press repetition, then weakened when the immediate follow-up pointed towards illuminated parachutists and when the official file proved more restrained than the legend.
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Endnotes
1.
Source: scribd.com
Title: 1979 02 06 Avistamiento en Aguas de Baleares
Link:https://www.scribd.com/document/764042101/1979-02-06-Avistamiento-en-Aguas-de-Baleares
Source snippet
1979-02-06 Avistamiento en Aguas de Baleares | PDF...
2.
Source: maldita.es
Link:https://maldita.es/malditahemeroteca/20230322/historia-buque-tamames-ovnis/
3.
Source: noudiari.es
Title: Defensa desclasifica un ‘Expediente OVNI’ ocurrido a 15 millas de Formentera
Link:https://www.noudiari.es/local-ibiza/defensa-desclasifica-un-expediente-ovni-ocurrido-a-15-millas-de-formentera/
4.
Source: murciaplaza.com
Link:https://murciaplaza.com/murciaplaza/el-petrolero-tamames
Source snippet
Murcia Plaza...
5.
Source: menorca.info
Title: ovnis formentera cuelan mocion censura vox
Link:https://www.menorca.info/balears/noticias/2023/03/22/1904481/ovnis-formentera-cuelan-mocion-censura-vox.html
6.
Source: rtve.es
Title: El paracaidismo militar
Link:https://www.rtve.es/play/audios/audios-para-recordar/audios-para-recordar-paracaidismo-militar/6802535/
7.
Source: es.scribd.com
Title: Avistamiento de OVNI en Castellbisbal Barcelona 6 11 1968
Link:https://es.scribd.com/document/328831650/Avistamiento-de-OVNI-en-Castellbisbal-Barcelona
8.
Source: es.scribd.com
Title: rojos y demoocratas pdf
Link:https://es.scribd.com/document/398060265/rojos-y-demoocratas-pdf
9.
Source: es.scribd.com
Title: rojos y demo cratas pdf
Link:https://es.scribd.com/document/325610539/rojos-y-demo-cratas-pdf
10.
Source: es.scribd.com
Title: T35001 Fondos Fotograficos ABC
Link:https://es.scribd.com/document/263244813/T35001-Fondos-Fotograficos-ABC
11.
Source: archive.org
Title: Apr 08 1976, Financial Times, #26940, UK (en) djvu.txt
Link:https://archive.org/stream/FinancialTimes1976UKEnglish/Apr%2008%201976%2C%20Financial%20Times%2C%20%2326940%2C%20UK%20%28en%29_djvu.txt
12.
Source: ia801409.us.archive.org
Title: P T.D. PROV35
Link:https://ia801409.us.archive.org/13/items/p-t.-d.-prov-35/P_T.D.PROV35.pdf
13.
Source: bibliotecavirtual.defensa.gob.es
Link:https://bibliotecavirtual.defensa.gob.es/BVMDefensa/exp_ovni/es/consulta/registro.do?control=BMDB20160070484
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Source: bibliotecavirtual.defensa.gob.es
Link:https://bibliotecavirtual.defensa.gob.es/BVMDefensa/exp_ovni/es/micrositios/inicio.do
15.
Source: elpais.com
Link:https://elpais.com/diario/1979/02/09/espana/287362819_850215.html
16.
Source: horaahora.wordpress.com
Link:https://horaahora.wordpress.com/category/notas/page/92/
Additional References
17.
Source: youtube.com
Title: The Manises UFO Incident: A Classic UFO Case from Spain
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7MTdkK_JaM
Source snippet
Spanish military UFO archive 1979 tanker “The Most Extraordinary Footage of all” - UNKNOWN UFO IN CALIFORNIA | Ancient Aliens | #Shorts H...
18.
Source: youtube.com
Title: Pentagon releases declassified UFO files detailing more than 400 incidents
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGYEQlBvJIc
Source snippet
Audio Recording of Witness's Terrifying UFO Sighting | UFO Witness...
19.
Source: youtube.com
Title: Audio Recording of Witness’s Terrifying UFO Sighting | UFO Witness
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyV-FFU1BQg
Source snippet
Bizarre Midair UFO Sighting Freaks Out Plane Passengers | New York Post...
20.
Source: youtube.com
Title: Bizarre Midair UFO Sighting Freaks Out Plane Passengers | New York Post
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqi4QNFXu-c
Source snippet
The Manises UFO Incident: A Classic UFO Case from Spain...
21.
Source: youtube.com
Title: Top Alien and UFO Encounters in History
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O8d0RLzqc0
Source snippet
Pentagon releases declassified UFO files detailing more than 400 incidents...
22.
Source: grupocooperativocajamar.es
Link:https://www.grupocooperativocajamar.es/es/comun/busquedas/busqueda-oficinas/
23.
Source: cervantesvirtual.com
Link:https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/research/la-desamortizacion-eclesiastica-en-la-provincia-de-murcia–0/01366ebc-82b2-11df-acc7-002185ce6064.pdf
24.
Source: facebook.com
Link:https://www.facebook.com/groups/fotosantiguasdesanlucarlamayor/posts/2587197251290919/
25.
Source: facebook.com
Link:https://www.facebook.com/chipiona/posts/-noticia-nacionalfelipe-gonz%C3%A1lez-reclama-a-s%C3%A1nchez-que-asuma-responsabilidades-p/1666949932100305/
26.
Source: facebook.com
Link:https://www.facebook.com/100063760352054/posts/grandes-personajes-de-la-provincia-de-almeria-municipio-a-municipio-y-si-falta-a/1591749530942365/
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