A colossal object the size of a football field glided through the airport in absolute silence, moving as lightly as a sheet of paper.

UFOs are back in fashion, being the subject of debate in parliaments and cafeterias, and the truth is that this dizzying revival of interest in such a veteran mystery never ceases to amaze me.

The Pentagon and NASA created study commissions while the British Ministry of Defense declassifies old seized photos whose existence was denied for decades, dismissing the matter as conspiracy nonsense.

This scenario favorable to disclosure, underpinned by the seriousness with which this issue is taken in the military sphere, undoubtedly makes it easier for some witnesses to take the step of speaking publicly about episodes about which they have remained silent for a good part of their lives. And such is the case of Santiago HR, who for more than forty years worked at the Gran Canaria Airport, a facility that shares space and resources with the Gando Military Base.

After retiring very recently, Santiago decided to speak publicly about an impressive experience lived a few months after starting to work in the place, at just 17 years old. A colossal object the size of a football field glided through the airport in absolute silence, moving as lightly as a sheet of paper. Today he remembers that episode for our readers convinced that that amazing UFO was not human, and that possibly other witnesses could have shared his experience.

It happened on a night in March —perhaps April— in the year 1974.

“At that time I worked the night shift, it started at 11 and ended at 7 in the morning,” he explains without hiding his emotion at being able to talk openly about the matter after so many years. «I worked cleaning planes. We were waiting for the last plane of the night, an Aviaco Super DC8 that was staying that night here, at the airport. There were few staff. Around 1:30 I moved a little towards the track, but without actually entering it, to clear my head, breathe fresh air and have a cigarette…».

-Is that when you see a light that could perfectly have been from the plane that was about to arrive?

“Indeed. A light appears at the tip of El Lazareto mountain, a resplendent light, very white. Immediately after turning on at the height of that mountain, in the sea, it went out and turned on around the Montaña del Burrero, also in the sea. There are kilometers of sea distance in a horizontal line. It immediately caught my attention because there couldn’t be two planes coming in at the same time, and besides, we were only expecting one.”

The show had only just begun, as the switching on and off was repeated four times with similar intensity, two in the El Lazareto area and another two in the vicinity of El Burrero. Subjectively, it could be said that it was a kind of warning, a signal, at least that was the effect on our witness, who even at that moment could not imagine what was literally coming his way.

«The light —continues Santiago— began to move from the area of La Puntilla to the south of the airport, and once inside the facility it came floating, gliding over the platform where the planes were parked that night. Upon reaching the position in which I was, about 18 or 20 meters high, I saw its shape perfectly. It was a dark round disk, with fixed red lights located around the entire perimeter of the circle, located about 5 meters away from each other, along with a structure of incandescent tubes on both sides, which formed two “X” for each disk side. Upon reaching my position at the edge of the track, it stopped for 2 or 3 seconds. It was huge, I estimate the size of a football field. I always associated it with that form,

Did it stop when it reached its height? Did you feel heat, did you hear anything coming from that structure?

“That’s how it is. it stood next to me for a few seconds, and I had the feeling that it was watching me, as if it were scanning me, but that’s just my impression. The side tubes that formed the double Xs seemed to come out of the fire, they were incandescent, although I did not feel heat or hear any sound. It didn’t seem to have motors.”

-And what happened next?

“After that brief stop, it continued moving in the same direction and speed, about 20 km per hour, and when it reached some small bushes located in what we call the old airport, it turned slightly and left, I lost sight of it.”

-One thing that stands out is the calm that he maintained when observing something so huge, close and strange…

«I was not scared, I was calm, as if that, somehow, generated that state of serenity in me. Of course, as a result of the experience my eyes began to water, I felt like a small burn that lasted three days, with chills. As I was a young boy, I didn’t give it more importance, since also with the passage of time it went away and, overnight, it was as if I forgot everything that happened ».

-It is already strange to forget about an object that, according to what you say, could perfectly have been 90 meters long by 15 or 20 meters wide…

«It is not that he did not remember it, but that he was not anxious to tell it, I decided not to do it and I did not feel worried about it. I’ve never forgotten it and kept quiet to stay out of trouble at work, since it was in a sensitive facility, and also because I didn’t feel the need to. I did not comment on anything with any partner, not even with the one who also saw it.

Was there another witness?

«At least as far as I know, one more. When the object was out of sight, behind me, from approximately 20 meters away from where I was, a coworker named Manuel came walking. He worked for Iberia in the building, in the transfer of luggage, and he left the premises and came directly to where I was and only asked me if I had seen what he had seen. I told him yes, he turned and walked away. We never brought up the subject again. With how big it was, it had to alert some radar, or have been seen by other people, although flying without noise and in such a smooth way, I would understand that it went unnoticed throughout the island.

– I insist, Santiago. The object surprises, but also that peculiar silence, since the tendency is to tell about it, to comment on it in the days that follow.

«I had the sensation of forgetting what I experienced that night as if someone told me “you saw what you saw and forget it”, since I never mentioned at work what I experienced during those three or four minutes».

The gigantic structure, which at least in appearance generated a certain physical reaction in the witness with itchy eyes and chills, did not present emblems, numbers, or visible symbols on its surface, presenting an estimated height of several meters on the disk side.

When asked if it could be manned, our protagonist does not hesitate to ensure that it is a feasible option, concluding that after forty years as part of the staff of an airport and with curiosity on the surface, “what we have today compared to what that I saw in 1974, is junk. It was a technology that we don’t have.”

Such an assertion should not surprise us if we consider that the largest plane in the world, the Ukrainian Antonov An-225 Mriya destroyed months ago by Russia, measured 84 meters long, and its mobility was thunderous.

At the time of closing this chronicle, we have already been able to independently confirm the existence of that second witness; someone to whom, like Santiago, the unheard of manifested itself on a spring night without complexes, nothing more and nothing less than the size of a football field.