A brief history of the UMMO affair (December 2009)

By José Juan Montejo

We shall try to tell the origin and development of the Ummo subject, the Ummo affair or even, keeping the French expression, the "affaire Ummo", since all of these are widespread among researchers and enthusiasts. We use these terms also to distinguish it from the story of the "planet Ummo" as a supposedly inhabited body, located some 14.4 light-years from Earth and orbiting a star called Iumma by those who wrote and/or sent typewritten letters and reports to a group of terrestrials, informing them about their culture, their science, their philosophy, etc. All of this forms part of the content of those messages, what might be called the "corpus doctrinae" of an alien civilization, as their authors claim. The aim of this brief history is not to dwell on that content, but to set out when, how and where the planet Ummo appears, who were the first recipients of the communications sent by those who claimed to be its expedition members on Earth, and how the Ummo affair arose and developed [1].

When is "UMMO" first spoken of as a hypothetical planet, independently of what the reports themselves say? As far as we know, it was in an article published in a Barcelona crime weekly called Por qué, in its issue no. 282 of 16 February 1966. This article, signed by the journalist José Luís Pimentel, had two distinct parts: the first on the landing of a UFO in the Aluche district of Madrid ten days earlier, on 6 February, with statements from several witnesses; and the second an interview with the most famous contactee in Spain, Fernando Sesma, who, when Pimentel asked him where one of the races in contact with him (the Auquian race) [2] came from, replied: "from the planet Ummo, which, by the way, is a new discovery of mine..."

Further details of that discovery were given by Sesma himself a month later, in issue no. 760 of the magazine Diez Minutos (hereafter DM), published on 19 March 1966, in the first chapter of a serial devoted to the planet Ummo which, by its last instalment (8 April 1967), would comprise 55 articles [3]. The details were that Sesma, after a self-critical review of his earlier experiences [4], revealed that one morning in the first half of January 1966 someone telephoned him and, in a peculiar voice, "repeated some strange words for quite a long time", which he wrote down, and at the end the caller announced that within a few days he would receive "some things and information of an extraterrestrial nature". These would be the first "Ummite" communications according to the first (or second) public acknowledgement of the Ummo subject, as far as we know today. Continuing with Sesma's account, when he received that information he thought it was "a well-organized joke", and said so to the caller the next time he rang. The caller considered his reaction logical and promised the contactee new proofs, which consisted of some three-dimensional photographs that an "emissary from Ummo" brought to his home and which Sesma, his wife and one of his sons were able to see, as well as the announcement, hours before it was first published in the press, and later confirmation, of the landing of one of their craft in Aluche and of two others in Australia and the former USSR.

At this point the reader should be told that these details appear in several Ummo letters, including the date of the first telephone call, which would have been 14 January 1966 [5], and also in the subcategory known as the "Typist's letters"[6]. There is another source, unpublished until now [7], which complements and extends the above data: besides confirming that day, it gives the time (12 noon) and reveals the identity of the caller, DEI 98. According to this very revealing source, in that first call, or in a later one, the Ummite told Fernando Sesma that "he would receive a red stone from the ancient civilization of UMMO (and) shortly afterwards they sent him that stone, which was artificial, rounded and bore 20 signs". After further calls which Sesma, apparently, did not want to answer, he finally received "the first report, which spoke of telepathy" [8]. In another call they told Sesma that they would let him see "for five minutes a device for monitoring meteorites, but as Sesma told them that he did not understand these things, they promised to send him some three-dimensional photographs". An exchange of views at the weekly gathering of the Ballena Alegre in the Café Lion, between Sesma and another member of the circle, makes it possible to date, according to Villagrasa and the aforementioned chapter of DM, what may have been the next Ummite letter received by Fernando Sesma, on 19 February 1966 and from Australia, with rules to be followed "regarding the various reports he was going to receive", regretting the criticism of that member of the circle (who was Dionisio Garrido) and asking for a retraction [9].

Besides what Villagrasa said, who noticed the most revealing item in D41-1 (that the Ummites used telepathic language, and that one of their worst diseases was related to this), there are other reasons for regarding it as the first letter received by Fernando Sesma: on the one hand, that the second chapter of the Ummite serial (DM, no. 761, 26 March 1966) begins precisely with its transcription, and on the other that, when that chapter concludes two weeks later (DM, no. 763, 9 April 1966), its penultimate paragraph uses the following link: "There exist among us -the first report continues- terrible diseases unknown to you..." This same issue provides another revealing detail: that Sesma continued his publication by "chopping up" the reports [10], since, having finished D41-1 in no. 763, he continues there with the beginning of the "accessory report on discoveries of other inhabited planets" [11]. The following week (DM, no. 764, 16 April 1966) Sesma, after summarizing another Ummite call, went on with the "History of our change of government", which appears in a different letter [12], and in the chapter of no. 765 (23 April 1966) he took up D41-16 [13] again, finishing it in the following week's chapter (DM, no. 766, 30 April 1966). The rest of the correspondence he received dealt, among other matters, with indeterminism and free will, the set known as "Daily life on Ummo" [14], the biography of "Ummowoa" (a figure similar to the terrestrial Jesus Christ), the ten-dimensional "cosmos", folds in space, the terrestrial social network, and even other supposed extraterrestrials, such as Saliano, infiltrated into our society [15]. The last communication he received was, we believe, the announcement of three Ummite landings in Bolivia, Brazil and Spain at the end of May 1967, read out at the Ballena Alegre on the 30th of that month [16]. When the serial in Diez Minutos came to an end, its editor and founder, Joaquín Valdés, received an Ummite letter [17] thanking him for having published the information they were sending to Sesma.

Whether anyone before Fernando Sesma received messages from Ummo is hard to determine. A clue to these proto-correspondents is found in letter D21, which gives a list of people contacted, placing first a "specialist in Astrophysics at the Fabra Astronomical Observatory in Barcelona" who would have been informed by telephone about novae in December 1961. It continues with a professor of Medicine in Madrid in March 1962, another professor of Chemistry in Madrid in January 1965, the commercial expert already mentioned in February 1966, Fernando Sesma, the painter Enrique Gran, two ladies from Madrid in March and April 1966, and finally the priest Fr. Severino Machado in April 1966. Of all of them, it has only been possible to confirm the identity of one of those ladies and the letter she received [18], who the other lady might be [19], and that both Gran and Machado received some message from Ummo [20]. As for the identity of the "professor of Medicine", who also presented himself as a correspondent of Ummo since December 1965 [21] in a letter sent to Enrique Villagrasa through the "typist" [22], there has been much speculation without arriving at anything concrete: the main candidate was the neurophysiologist Dr Antonio Gallego, a name obtained by reconstructing the letterhead of the letter, which appeared cut off, but he always denied any connection.

Apart from Sesma, other regulars at his gatherings were becoming interested in messages which, at least in appearance, differed considerably from those that had been read at the Ballena Alegre until then. One of them was Enrique Villagrasa, who rejoined the gatherings in February 1966 after reading about the Aluche landing in the press, and who had to wait until October to receive his first Ummite call, which, incidentally, his maid answered because he was out. Days later, specifically on 10 November 1966, he received a letter signed by DA 3 announcing that they would telephone to ask him what subjects interested him, and a postscript said that a similar letter had been sent to the well-known playwright of the time Alfonso Paso [23]. The Ummite called that same day, and Villagrasa told him that he wished to receive information about multidimensional space, the Ummites' first journey to Earth and the "ibozoo uu", all of which he duly received from the end of that month until November 1967.

Even more of a veteran than Villagrasa was Dionisio Garrido, the "involuntary" protagonist of the Ummite reply mentioned above [24], who received reports on parapsychology, astronomy, computers, three-dimensional photography with gaseous lenses and a description of two devices for recording sounds without moving parts, ending in July 1967. In March of that year it would be the turn of another regular at the gatherings, Alicia Araujo, with a first letter announcing the forthcoming dispatch of a report on the biogenetic bases of living beings, which she would receive in several instalments over the following weeks [25].

All those mentioned so far had in common that they attended the Ballena Alegre gatherings in 1966/67, or had done so years earlier, but there was another correspondent with no known connection to that circle: a supposed Manuel Campo, introduced as a lawyer and/or sociologist, who would have left for South America around the autumn of 1967 [26]. A series of letters and reports (of introduction, on the Ummite social network and its form of government, its legal and political concepts) [27] was addressed to him, but received by other correspondents, such as Enrique Villagrasa. Another difference is that Manuel Campo, like the professor of medicine, has always remained anonymous despite attempts to locate him, and to this day we know nothing about him, not even whether he really existed.

In April and May 1967 at least three letters were received, by Alicia Araujo [28], Fernando Sesma and Enrique Villagrasa [29], announcing the forthcoming landing of an Ummo craft in an area near Madrid and of two others in Bolivia and Brazil, within a period covering the last days of that month and the beginning of June. As far as Madrid is concerned, the prediction seemed to be confirmed by a mass sighting on the afternoon of 1 June at several places south-west of Madrid (from the San José de Valderas district in Alcorcón, up towards Madrid along the Extremadura road as far as the Santa Mónica estate in Campamento), which was published the next day in the Madrid press, including photos taken by an anonymous photographer [30].

Those three spacecraft supposedly had the mission of taking on board the Ummite expedition, which had withdrawn to those three countries for the purpose, so as to flee to their planet because of the risk they had supposedly detected of a possible nuclear war [31]. That is how the "typist" explained it in a long letter received by Enrique Villagrasa in June 1967 [32].

Be that as it may, the fact is that in the following months hardly any Ummite letters were received, although the "typist" continued to send personal letters to several correspondents [33]. Two of the last of this period were received by Enrique Villagrasa in June 1968 [34], and with them came a report describing the Ummo craft, with complementary notes [35].

Meanwhile, some changes had taken place in the group of recipients, who, following the "Ummite" instruction not to mix their messages with those of other supposed aliens who wrote to Fernando Sesma and several members of the circle [36], moved away from the Ballena without entirely leaving that milieu, and from the end of 1967 and the beginning of 1968 began to meet in various cafés around Madrid (such as Morrison and S'Agaró) to deal specifically with the Ummo affair. It is at this point, once Sesma had lost the Ummite contact, that the so-called "Madrid group" took shape, with new members such as Juan Aguirre, Jorge Barrenechea, Alberto Borrás, José Antonio Cezón, Julián Delgado, Juan Domínguez, Rafael and Francisco Mejorada and the Frenchman Bernard Labro, who joined those coming from the Ballena Alegre, among whom were not only those who had received Ummite communications but also José Luís Jordán [37], Joaquín Martínez, Franco Muela and Fernando Villalba [38]. And two of the "veterans", Enrique Villagrasa and Alicia Araujo, even took the initiative of breaking the group's exclusive character and sharing the experience they were living through with people outside it. That is how Antonio Ribera and Rafael Farriols, from Barcelona, burst onto the scene in those last months of 1967, followed shortly afterwards by the parish priest of Mairena del Alcor (Seville), Enrique López Guerrero.

In this way the Madrid monopoly was broken, and during 1968 the three researchers mentioned travelled to Madrid to obtain information from the group of recipients: Ribera and Farriols in order to extend and document their study of the Aluche and San José de Valderas sightings [39], and the priest in order to confirm his own Christocentric theories [40]. Both Ribera and Fr. López Guerrero soon found themselves among the recipients of Ummo letters: the first received by the Catalan writer, preceded by several calls, arrived in October of that year [41], and during 1969 and 1970 he went on receiving letters and reports on a variety of subjects, about the origin and provenance of the correspondents, language, philosophy, ontology, morality or theology [42], as well as some reasons for the controlled dissemination of that information, congratulations on the Apollo 11 moon landing, an exposition on the terrestrial social situation (sent jointly to Dionisio Garrido) and condolences on the death of Bertrand Russell [43]. As for Enrique López Guerrero, he received a letter six months after his explosive statements, which began with a certain reprimand, went on with the account of their arrival and activities in Spain, the people the Ummites had contacted, etc., and ended with a list of alternative hypotheses about their true identity [44].

The fact that the Madrid group lost prominence in this period does not mean that it also lost contact, since in 1969 the case of the "extraterrestrial Atienza" and his emissary Francisco Donís, known at first as "Sinod", came to the fore [45]. After the publication of his experiences, in January 1969 Donís received a letter from Ummo proposing that he put some questions to his contact "Atienza"; the contactee replied in February with an appeal to the Ummites in the pages of La Actualidad Española, and a few days later received a second letter that included a binary code to be put to "Atienza" as soon as he had the chance [46]. The expectation created by this whole exchange was enormous, and culminated in a crowded meeting held at Francisco Donís's home to read that letter, but the others present wanted to take the opportunity to give their host a series of questions which he in turn would pass on to the Ummites. At one point during the reading, a woman told Donís that someone wanted him on the telephone. He interrupted the reading and answered the call, in which a nasal voice asked him that "the brothers gathered in your home should not put questions to my brothers". Part of this call was recorded by one of those present, Rafael Farriols, by attaching a suction cup to an extension [47]. Incidentally, in April Farriols received his first Ummite letter, as far as we know, which was a mixture of rebuke and praise: on the one hand they reproached him for having made the recording, and on the other they congratulated him on the publication of "Un caso perfecto" [48].

Donís's contacts gradually fell into oblivion for the Spanish media, although abroad they continued to attract attention for a time, mainly in Argentina: a magazine called 2001 - Periodismo de Anticipación was published there, and from June 1969 the Ummo affair and its murkier aspects were the subject of controversy for many months. In the midst of all that uproar the first Ummite circular letter was received, in the form of a microfilm, that is, the same document sent to a number of people. It arrived in September, postmarked in Berlin, and was a typical letter of introduction, with astronomical and geographical data on Ummo and a table of mathematical equivalences [49]. Most of the recipients were Argentinian, from the magazine 2001 itself to the researchers Ariel Ciro Rietti, Pedro Romaniuk and Fr. Segundo Benito Reyna, and probably the ufologist and Spanish exile Luis Anglada Font. There were also French recipients (the very well-known Aimé Michel and René Fouéré) and the Italian mystery magazine Clypeus [50]. Curiously, only one Spanish recipient of this microfilmed letter is known: Eduardo García Guirardó, a young ufologist living in Melilla and, as far as we know, unconnected with the Ballena Alegre and the meetings of the Madrid group [51].

In October of the same year the Valencian ufologist Vicente Juan Ballester Olmos, then president of the C.E.O.N.I. group [52], convened at an estate in Galapagar (Madrid) the first national meeting of UFO researchers, attended among others by veterans such as Antonio Ribera, Óscar Rey Brea and Manuel Osuna (the last two very critical of the supposed reality of Ummo), and by representatives of the second generation such as Félix Ares and David Gustavo López, who belonged to the Aleph group, one of the many devoted to UFO research in Madrid. One of the decisions taken there was to unify the scattered Madrid groups and splinter groups into a single body, and so on 17 January 1970 a total of ten people signed the founding charter of Erídani - Agrupación de Estudios Cosmológicos (A.E.C.). Besides Ares and López, several members of the Madrid group were there, such as Enrique Villagrasa, Alberto Borrás, Bernard Labro and Franco Muela, and also José Luis Jordán, who was elected president of the new group and who until then had led the I.C.S.A.D.E. [53]. Two different tendencies soon became apparent within Erídani: those in favour of a serious and general study of the UFO phenomenon, who made no secret of their aversion to the Ummo subject, led by Félix Ares and David López; and those who preferred to study the subject and its ramifications, headed by the president, Jordán, and the other members of the Madrid group who had joined Erídani.

The fact that several Ummite letters were received at Erídani's headquarters during 1970 and 1971 did nothing to improve the situation. The main issue was the supposed surveillance by the American C.I.A. of several members because of their interest in, or dedication to, the study of Ummo, and the proposal of a meeting in London to receive "instructions" because of the difficulties the "Ummites" would have in evading that control [54]. The epilogue to this "espionage" came with a letter received in January 1971 by Alberto Borrás, accompanied by two identity cards and a photograph, lost (?) by the supposed agent in charge of that surveillance [55].

This situation fuelled suspicion within Erídani, and the fact that the Madrid group held meetings on Ummo at its headquarters behind the backs of the other members not involved in the subject, and that messages kept arriving at its premises without being shared with those members, precipitated the crisis in May 1971, with the departure of Félix Ares, David López and Erídani's youth section, among others, over the following weeks. Given the coincidence of dates, we assume that the trigger was the receipt at Erídani itself of two letters postmarked in London [56]: the first was received on 24 May, twelve days after the date of the postmark, and apparently it was delivered not by the postman "but by an unknown young man who left it with the porter" [57]. Unlike the latest mailings, in which the anecdotal or personal side predominated, this missive returned to the tone of the reports, dealing with exobiology and the possibility of higher life, anatomical differences between terrestrials and Ummites, and sexual life on Ummo, with some notes at the end [58]. The second was received on 19 June by Erídani's secretary, a post held by Bernard Labro, and gave some advice on avoiding or alleviating the dependence on the Ummites that might affect members of the group, together with some reasons that prevented them from providing firmer proof of their existence [59]. With these events surrounding Erídani, it is not surprising that the patience of the "separatists" reached its limit and that they ended up leaving the association.

No further letters or reports were received during the rest of the year, although another event occurred which we consider relevant to our story: from the beginning of 1971 the Seville ufologist Ignacio Darnaude, with the help of Manuel Osuna, had been very active mobilizing relatives, friends and other correspondents in Albacete, with the aim of verifying some loose details about the arrival of the "Ummites" in Spain mentioned in a couple of letters [60], which said that an animal-loving lady, Margarita Ruiz de Lihory, had helped them and given them lodging in her palace in Albacete, where they secretly carried out biological experiments on animals belonging to its owner. Darnaude circulated among some researchers a report he had written on the case of the "severed hand", a sordid affair involving the mutilation of a corpse in which that lady was implicated [61]. This matter was the subject of several Ummite letters received by Darnaude himself in 1972 and 1973 [62], the latter postmarked in Stockholm.

Until Erídani closed in 1975, the Ummite correspondence was divided between Madrid (that association and some of its members) and Barcelona (Rafael Farriols). Reports with technical or scientific content almost disappeared, giving way to what we might call "maintenance letters", a situation that continued until the Ummo subject was reactivated in 1987. Between 1972 and 1974 the reports dealt with the state of the terrestrial social network and its evolution [63], the collective soul and the Pluricosmos [64]. And the letters contained personal messages to various recipients [65], or dealt with the organization of the second Ummo symposium in Barcelona [66], the risk of a nuclear alert during the Yom Kippur war and the offer of a nuclear shelter in the Sierra de Gredos [67], or Erídani's internal problems, recommending subjects for lecture series and defending it against the accusation of being a front for a sect [68].

For more than five years nothing more was heard from the Ummo source, with the exception of two letters received in 1976: one on the participation of members of the group in one of the first episodes of the television programme Más Allá, presented by the psychiatrist Fernando Jiménez del Oso, with some guidelines for controlling the dissemination of the reports; and the second on certain "apocryphal" telephone calls, insisting on the question of the publication of their texts, with the advantages and drawbacks that this would entail according to the "Ummites" [69].

As we said, no further "Ummite" information was received in Spain, as far as we know, until 1979, in contrast with the first mass dissemination of the Ummo affair, most notably the first monograph Antonio Ribera devoted to the subject [70], preceded by two other books published in 1978 [71].

The letter that ended the information drought was received in May 1979 by a new correspondent, Luís Jiménez Marhuenda, a journalist and radio presenter in Alicante. Although the letter is dated 23 May 1978, it seems the "Ummites" got the year wrong here. It was, once again, a letter of introduction in which they justified their silence by having been away from our planet for a long time, adding that they had returned in October of the previous year and landed in Denmark. There followed a summary of their contacts revealing that there had been two critical moments (their involvement in the "severed hand" incident and in the warning, later confirmed, of the 1973 nuclear alert), and finally greetings to a number of people [72]. Shortly afterwards Juan Aguirre received another letter revealing the existence of two Ummite bases (one in Denmark and another at an undetermined place in the mountains near Madrid), with the character of a report, since it spoke of the ibozoo uu and their relationship with plasma weapons, denounced as dangerous because of their strategic value in the Cold War climate of the time [73].

In 1980 a kind of fever for the Ummo subject broke out, prompted by the impact of the books we have mentioned and by their coverage in various media, both broadcast and print. Thanks to the efforts of the newcomer Jiménez Marhuenda and the C.I.M. group [74], a third public meeting was held in Alicante in March of that year under the title "Commemorative and Study Days on the Planet UMMO", in which the most important researchers and people involved in the Ummo affair at the time took part [75]. And, as a repeat of the 1971 symposium [76], the receptionist told several of those attending about two very strange characters who did not even know how to sign their identity card with a ballpoint pen.

This second rumour gained substance when, in April, Luís Jiménez Marhuenda received a letter from Ummo, sent from Albacete, about the recent meeting, accompanied, moreover, by a small radioactive plate. Besides confirming the presence of two Ummites, they expressed their frustration at the vehement attitudes they had detected during the meeting and criticized the human race for suffering from various pathologies and placing itself in the hands of sick leaders capable of any disaster, ending with the usual greetings. As in 1979, a few days later Jorge Barrenechea received another letter which began by offering condolences on the death of Jean-Paul Sartre and then went over similar matters: the chaotic socio-economic situation on Earth and the impossibility of helping humanity because of the danger that their advances, solutions, etc. would be manipulated by the ruling classes; and it ended on a pessimistic note: "We do not even dare to advise you. We fear that any word of ours would be mythified, distorted, corrupted, trivialized. We see you heading, singing, playing instruments and amusing yourselves like heedless children, towards a cemetery of nuclear waste. May WOA have mercy on you" [77].

After this cold shower there were no further communications until 1983, except for a maintenance letter in January 1981 about the sending of their letters to unstable people and the risk of dogmatism that this entailed [78]. Meanwhile, other interesting things were happening: in June 1980 Ignacio Darnaude published a first inventory of Ummo documents [79], the origin of his famous "Documentary catalogue of the Ummo cryptogroup", known for short as Ummocat, an essential working tool for anyone studying the subject. In June 1981 L. Jiménez Marhuenda received Ummite congratulations on the launch of the American space shuttle Columbia, which was published as genuine together with the letters from 1979 onwards that we are discussing [80]. However, that letter turned out to be a small experiment devised by Argentinian researchers [81], and it coincided in the 1980s with other false messages, jokes, games or similar experiments, probably the result of the publicity the Ummo affair was attracting [82].

In 1983 and 1984 one Ummite letter was received each year by the indirect method already mentioned. The first, dated 27 February 1983 and posted on 12 March in Kuala Lumpur (the capital of Malaysia), was addressed to Juan Aguirre but was handed, as the text itself noted, to Fr. Manuel Álvarez, director of the Colegio Mayor San Agustín (Madrid) and organizer of some talks and discussions on the Ummo affair held in March 1983. It was delivered by a young woman who arrived as the discussion was closing: the missive began by asserting the postal and telephone control the "Ummites" exercised over several members of the group, predicted a pessimistic future for humanity, and then dealt with other matters more typical of the reports, with an exposition on the collective soul, genetic mutations and the threat of the arms race in several countries [83]. That year one of the most prominent members of the group, Juan Domínguez, made public his hypotheses on multiple universes and the possibility of space travel based on that model, all according to the Ummite reports and other sources[84].

In March 1984, coinciding with a second discussion at the same Colegio Mayor, it was again Juan Aguirre who received at his home an Ummite letter postmarked in Zimbabwe, apparently incomplete, accompanied by a personal letter from an anonymous correspondent [85]. As with the previous year's letter, the recipient was not its addressee, since in this case it was addressed to Rafael Farriols: it insisted on the telephone control of members of the group, revealed a strategy of discrediting by means of proofs and counter-proofs, and concluded with a gloomy picture of the political and social situation on Earth and the risk of nuclear war.

In that same year another event important for our story took place: Juan Aguirre, one of the most active members of the Madrid group, published through a Madrid copy shop the compilation of all the Ummo reports known up to then. The Escritos de UMMO ("Writings of UMMO"), as this compilation would be called, initially consisted of five volumes, although in the final version they would be organized in three. In this way, from 1984 the whole body of reports and letters attributed to the Ummite source was made available to the curious and the interested.

There would be no further communications until 1987, and from March of that year a different stage began, characterized by reports rather than by letters in the style of the 1970s, which brings this period close to the flow of information of the first era, including telephone conversations with the anonymous senders. The mailings were divided between Madrid and Barcelona, and in the former there were new members, permanent (Javier Muela, Alfredo Lara, Julián Barrenechea) or occasional (Fr. José Mª Pilón or Julio César Iglesias), who replaced members who had died, such as Alicia Araujo, Franco Muela and Fr. Manuel Álvarez [86].

The start, that March, came with four letters, as far as we know, and two reports. The letters set out a declaration of intent about the information to come, offered condolences for the members of the group who had recently died, and denounced the exploitation of women and the false letters that had been received, offering as a guarantee the use of the same typewriter as in the 1960s and an attached small plate [87]; they also asked for photocopies of the first communications, because the "typist" and other collaborators had destroyed those they had kept, as well as a handwriting sample from those interested in Ummo, all of it to be kept in their museums [88]. The fourth letter announced the forthcoming dispatch of a report on the collective soul and offered new details of their involvement in the "severed hand" case and of other activities in Albacete to recover an instrument of chromium-manganese made on Ummo which had ended up in the hands of an agent of the American C.I.A. [89].

The announced report, like the letter, was addressed to Juan Domínguez although it was received by Jorge Barrenechea, and it dealt with the "buaue biaeii" or planetary collective soul, the two limit universes (that of individual souls and that of collective souls), the "waam-waam" or pairs of twin cosmoses, and post-mortem experiences [90]. The second report, accompanied by an introductory letter with greetings and personal messages for several members of the group [91], was received a few days later by Barrenechea although it was addressed to Rafael Farriols; it was presented as a complement to the previous one and was a synopsis of the "waam-waam" concept, the interaction between the different cosmoses and imaginary mass as the key element of those disturbances and of certain "boundary effects" produced at the limit of adjacent universes [92]. These two reports crown the "Ummite" cosmo-theology set out in earlier texts [93], and in the opinion of some students of the subject they stand as masterpieces of Ummite literature, both for their originality and for their significance.

In April and May three new texts were received, with the novelty that they were addressed to Jorge Barrenechea's wife, Carmen Borrás: the two of April dealt with abortion and with a summary of the prehistory and archaeological finds of Ummo and its scientific discoveries, and the one of May with the age-old oppression of women by men [94].

The next communication arrived in October 1987, in the form of a letter from the "typist" [95] enclosed with another said to be the transcription of a tape recording (?) in which the "Ummites" denied having supplied technical data to Juan Domínguez for his patent on three-dimensional television [96].

Two months later a report was received on the repercussions in the Pluricosmos of violating universally accepted natural and moral laws [97].

In January 1988 there was a new volley, with Jorge Barrenechea receiving a three-part report on the "oemmiwoas", a kind of cosmic avatars or mutants who drive the evolution of the humanities in which they become incarnate, ending in the third part with a comparison between Ummowoa and the Christian Jesus, whom they call "Oyagaawoa", confirming the authenticity of the Holy Shroud of Turin [98]. Between January and February the same correspondent received another report in two parts revealing the plan for a seizure of power by the "Ummites" in the face of the danger of a world war with nuclear, plasma or biotechnological weapons; it went on with incidents they had suffered in Australia and the USA and their knowledge of other alien civilizations that had come to Earth, with a list of Spanish citizens manipulated by the expedition members of one of them [99], and several notes, one of them with new data on the "severed hand" case [100].

During the following months the tone returned to that of the letters: thus, in February Jorge Barrenechea received a letter accompanied by another intended for Antonio Ribera, defending him and Fernando Sesma against insinuations of plagiarism made in the magazine Interviú [101], plus another in English, with its translation, addressed to Juan Aguirre but intended for the journalist Joaquín Francés as a reply to that content [102]. In May a brief communication was received about certain business contacts made by several members of the group, and in August another mailing continued the question of the business nucleus, thanked them for the interest shown in publishing the vindication of Sesma and Ribera [103], criticized other injustices such as the imprisonment of the South African leader Nelson Mandela, and ended by acknowledging their intervention in curing the illness José Luís Jordán had suffered in March [104].

In the autumn of 1988 two events occurred which had nothing to do with each other but which would provoke a reaction from the Ummite source: in September the magazine Cuadernos de Ufología published the article "Ummo: 20 años de paranoia compartida" ("Ummo: 20 years of shared paranoia"), signed by the Catalan doctor Carles Berché, which, besides analysing several errors in the Ummite reports, ventured the hypothesis that José Luís Jordán might be the creator of the whole Ummo affair. And in October the international press published the results of the study several laboratories had carried out on samples of the Holy Shroud of Turin, indicating that it had been made in the 14th century and therefore could never have covered the body of Jesus. In both cases Jorge Barrenechea was the recipient of a series of letters in October and November, which culminated on the one hand in a collective letter signed by several members of the group, dated 23 October 1988, playing down the credibility of the subject and denying that they had ever acknowledged its extraterrestrial origin [105], and on the other in a discussion on the Holy Shroud, preceded by several letters denouncing an unspecified fraud committed with it [106], others with instructions for the event and a list of those attending [107], plus a sealed envelope containing the report to be read during the meeting.

The meeting took place on 20 November 1988 [108], and two letters were read at it: one received days earlier by the journalist Julio César Iglesias, setting out the theory of the "oemmiwoas" and regretting that the deception committed with the Shroud had deprived humanity of the only available proof of the terrestrial "Ummowoa" [109]. The other was the report in the sealed envelope, which explained what that deception consisted of, always according to the "Ummites": it acknowledged, apparently in line with the controversial laboratory results, that the Holy Shroud known to the public was indeed a fake, but claimed that there was a genuine one, which had been displayed in Turin until 1929. Certain analyses of the time had led part of the Vatican curia to "conspire" to replace it secretly with a careful reproduction: they obtained a 13th-century cloth made in Jaffa (Israel), built a metal mould of the figure shown on the true Shroud and, heating it to a suitable temperature, brought it close to the cloth, and the result would be the relic displayed in Turin Cathedral [110].

This meeting closed the stage that had begun at the start of 1987, and several later events brought a certain disenchantment to the group, and even disappointment among some of its members, who gradually distanced themselves from the subject, as in the case of Juan Domínguez. Among the triggers one may mention the significant coincidence between the dates of the meeting at the Hotel Sanvy and a meeting in another Madrid hotel of the leadership of the Church of Scientology (which ended with their arrest in a police raid), and the detail that two of the guests [111] had been linked to sects; a strange interview held days later by two members of the group with a well-known Madrid journalist and ufologist, whom they held responsible for Carles Berché's article, in order to read him a supposed Ummo text received by José Luís Jordán which implicated that journalist in sectarian plots; the curious insistence of the "Ummites" on defending the authenticity of the Shroud even at the cost of proposing a fraud stranger than the one put forward by the laboratories; and the failure of the business nucleus encouraged by Ummo [112] because of internal disagreements within the group.

In September 1989 a supposed UFO landing took place in the city of Voronezh (former USSR), with the observation of several humanoids. When the young people who witnessed the event depicted what had happened, they apparently drew the Ummite sign on one of the drawings of the landed object, and in February 1990 several people received a new Ummo circular letter which took the Voronezh event as a demonstration of their presence, alluded to conferences on disarmament and world peace held with the leaders of the superpowers, and ended by offering condolences on the death of the Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, to whom they had supposedly also sent reports [113]. The fifth of those conferences was announced for the following 14 April in the German city of Essen, with representatives of George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev present, and ten days earlier several people received another letter, this time in Spanish and posted in Ávila, with the supposed guests and those excluded from that summit, a new confirmation of the Voronezh landing, regret at the dissolution of the "Madrid group" and a warning that the messages would cease because of their withdrawal from Spain [114].

However, nine months later a new Ummite letter became known, about the crisis in the Persian Gulf, with the third confirmation of the Voronezh case, the announcement of their imminent departure from Earth now that their work with the terrestrial leaders was finished and the date of their last contact with President G. Bush, their knowledge of a secret report with the probable dates of the allied attack, and the risk that terrorist commandos might contaminate drinking-water reservoirs in several Western countries (including Spain) with genetically modified viruses [115].

Between 1991 and 1993 the Spanish role seems to give way to the growing interest that the "affaire Ummo" (never was the French term more apt) aroused in France. The credit for making it fashionable went to the French physicist Jean Pierre Petit, who had been very interested in the Ummite texts for years, who published his first book on the subject [116] and, curiously, began to receive reports from Ummo on his speciality, magnetohydrodynamics, and others on theoretical physics, cosmology, gravitational waves and the inversion of the "ibozoo uu" [117].

The next "Ummite" letter received in Spain, as far as we know, arrived in April 1993 and was addressed to Rafael Farriols, who was warned of risks in financial investments and asked to organize at his home a meeting of "Ummologists", whose purpose was, among other things, to revive the belief in Ummo of their main correspondent in the immediately preceding years, Jorge Barrenechea, and to have José Luís Jordán explain to them the truth of what he knew about the "affaire Ummo" [118]... The background to such a singular request should be sought in 1992 when, during some esoteric conferences held in Madrid, the intermediary "Mari Sol" revealed herself to two members of the group and to one of the speakers [119]. Jordán excused himself from attending the meeting in a letter to Rafael Farriols in which he accused himself of being the sole author of the Ummite reports, and in a second letter to the same recipient he set out the "ethical code" he had applied in his supposed experiment. These two letters, dated 6 and 8 April 1993, constitute the first verified acknowledgement by José Luís Jordán of his involvement in the Ummo affair [120].

These statements, which even then seemed contradictory and insufficient to many, prompted a group of Spanish and foreign researchers to set out their investigations and working hypotheses, also as a serious response to the doubts raised by José Luís Jordán with his confession. Thus the same magazine that in 1988 had published Dr Berché's theory of shared paranoia made the effort in 1994 to present a varied dossier [121] which has since served as a source, not always acknowledged, for writers and journalists whose publications have had wider resonance.

It took three years for the Spanish group to hear from Ummo again: in July and August 1996 Rafael Farriols once more received two letters, apparently posted in Madrid, asking him to call various people on certain dates (so that his telephone line could be monitored) in order to gauge their interest in the subject, praising his unpublished book "El Hombre, el Cosmos y Dios" ("Man, the Cosmos and God") [122] while correcting two errors in it, announcing that the financial risk had disappeared and giving a list of candidates for re-forming the group of those interested in Ummo [123]. Although the letters could be circulated in copies, this was on condition that the identifying stamp be hidden, since it apparently differed in some way from the classic symbol. This detail would make it possible to authenticate future mailings from the Ummite source and distinguish them from false ones, and that may be why those who know it still keep it secret.

The fact is that since 1996 no Spanish correspondent, as far as we know, has received any further Ummite messages, so that the wait which for some might justify that secrecy has lasted more than thirteen years, a longer interval than any of the periods without information we have mentioned in the course of this work.

However, since 2003 some communications have been received in France which could be the exception to that absence. Interest in the "affaire Ummo" in our neighbouring country grew thanks to the popularizing work of Jean Pierre Petit and other researchers, such as those who at the beginning of the decade gathered around the website Ummo-Sciences run by André Jacques Holbecq. Some of them have published books on their research, notably a linguistic study of the Ummite language [124]. These messages have been circulated with certain restrictions, from the removal of personal paragraphs and annexes to the protection of a recipient's identity under a pseudonym [125]. This was the case of "Pierre Martain", who received five of these letters during 2003, all sent from France [126]. The first was a letter of introduction, about Ummo's contact with another supposed planet called "Dookaaia", which influenced its scientific and spiritual development, and the idea of a galactic community policing itself under the principle of non-interference; the following missives dealt with matters such as the psychological pathology that would affect terrestrial civilization and the notion of the psycho-virus, the parallels between Ummite and Japanese society, and volcanology. They also expressed understanding towards the Spanish group for its lapses in confidentiality, condolences on the death of Sergio Vieira de Mello, their monitoring of the e-mails among the members of Ummo-Sciences, praise and recommendations to two of them, the extraterrestrial origin of the British crop circles, clarifications of the geography of Ummo, interference by imaginary mass with the telepathy of the Ummites, demography and birth control, Ummite physiology and behaviour, the ceremony on Ummo of consented death and conversion into helium, as well as official reactions to their presence and a predictive model of intervention on Earth. It is worth noting that, after 36 years without confirming or announcing sightings of their craft, except in the Voronezh case, one of these letters, as then, mentions a triple landing in the United States, Australia and Mexico [127]. The administrators of Ummo-Sciences themselves warn that the absence of certain "traditional" elements of validation suggests that these mailings could be apocryphal, so their authenticity remains in quarantine.

In January 2004 it was the turn of Alban Nanty [128], who received a report that, in its content and ambitions, recalls the classic Spanish ones. After reiterating that they were monitoring the e-mails on the French list, it deals with four-valued logic, the idea of "aïooyaou" or an indeterminate reality of potential and predictable existence, and the concepts of retropositivity and its symmetrical counterpart, retronegativity.

There followed a five-year interval during which the ties between the French and the Spanish group [129] grew closer, with the organization of bilateral and semi-public meetings both in France and in Spain: here we may mention those held in Madrid in October 2004 and in the same month of 2005 [130], the latter with the unexpected presence of José Luís Jordán.

The beginning of 2006 brought an apparent revival of the Ummo affair, with messages received by various Spanish researchers (the present writer among them) by post and e-mail on subjects such as the physics of raindrops or the socio-cultural situation in the world, with special attention to Spain. These communications came from a supposed "Ummite" who called himself "John Axee", and, as one of the recipients pointed out at the time, "they show a marked similarity to certain interviews with José Luís Jordán Peña and certain articles from his pen, in their themes, terminology, verbal tics and general style" [131]. The suspicion has been confirmed from several directions, such as J. L. Jordán himself sending e-mails from the same address as "John Axee", or what one [132] of the recipients had told Jordán shortly before these mailings began: that he would love to receive an "authentic" Ummite letter, and that what was sent to him should mention details known only to the two of them.

For editorial reasons, a book [133] by Juan José Benítez devoted to the Ummo affair was published in 2007 and not earlier, which is hardly surprising given that his interest in the subject went back a long way [134]. The Navarrese writer recounts his investigations of UFOs bearing the typical Ummite emblem or various variants of it; among them stand out his investigation of a cattle-mutilation incident on the Bolivian high plateau around 1967, which could be related to the prediction of three "Ummite" craft that year [135], the new testimonies he found and links to the San José de Valderas case, and the whole section on his conversations and interviews with José Luís Jordán, very tellingly entitled "El cuento del lobo" ("Crying wolf").

Finally, in March of this year the French group heard again from the Ummo source, through a report received by Jean François Dupouy by ordinary post and, on the same day, by private e-mail by the Ummo-Sciences list [136]. After recalling once again the monitoring of that list, it compares terrestrial artistic development with that of Ummo, reports that one of the 1966 expedition members, DA 3, built a museum on Ummo devoted to terrestrial culture, remembers the victims of Chernobyl, and includes three annexes: on the biology and customs of the anthropoids with whom they share their planet, with praise for the work of the primatologist Jane Goodall; on the astronomical origin of their reckoning of time; and the last on their calendar and the astronomical characteristics of a second planet in their star system called "Nawee".

This is where this chronicle ends. The author reminds the reader of the appeal he made in the first note, and allows himself to make another to the ladies and gentlemen of Ummo, whether they are 14 light-years away or a few kilometres from Madrid, Paris or any other city on Earth: we are waiting for you.

Madrid, December 2009.

NOTES

NOTE 1: Of course, the person responsible for the account that follows is the undersigned, who will welcome comments, corrections, criticism, etc., with due argument and documentation. Back

NOTE 2: There is an error here on the part of the magazine, since the "Auquians", according to what Fernando Sesma had already published at the time, did not come from Ummo but from a certain planet AUCO, and one of their spokesmen, who sent him telephone and postal messages, went by the name of Saliano. This is not the place to analyse that article, but it is worth recalling that it contained two important facts: that Sesma had been told of the Aluche landing four days beforehand, and that he and his family had seen some three-dimensional photographs of extraterrestrial origin (?). Back

NOTE 3: In 1967 Fernando Sesma collected the complete serial in book form under the title "Ummo, otro planeta habitado" ("Ummo, another inhabited planet"), published by Gráficas Espejo, S.A., the same publisher as Diez Minutos. Back

NOTE 4: Fernando Sesma had been a regular contributor to Diez Minutos since the early 1950s, writing on astrology and, from 1954, also on a subject then in vogue, flying saucers. The experiences referred to were collected in an earlier series in the Madrid magazine entitled "Hablan los extraterrestres" ("The extraterrestrials speak"), with 22 chapters published from no. 730 (21 August 1965) to no. 753 (29 January 1966). Back

NOTE 5: The date is revealed in letter D21, which deals with the Aluche case, the main subject of D31-1, D37-2 and D38. Letter D28 deals with the emissary's visit, and D73 and the aforementioned D21 with the first contacts with Fernando Sesma and their motives. Back

NOTE 6: Mentioned as a commercial expert in D21, the supposed author of several letters, such as D135, in which he identifies himself as the emissary who brought Fernando Sesma the three-dimensional photographs; he added that he wrote the letters and reports at the Ummites' dictation, and that he had known them before the Aluche UFO became public. Back

NOTE 7: A paper by Enrique Villagrasa entitled "Primeros contactos entre Fernando Sesma y los seres de Ummo" ("First contacts between Fernando Sesma and the beings of Ummo"), undated, one sheet. Back

NOTE 8: This is probably letter D41-1, as explained below. Back

NOTE 9: This is D28, whose correct date we believe is 19 February 1966, not 19 March of that year. Back

NOTE 10: We do not know who was ultimately responsible for such a peculiar arrangement: Sesma himself, or the magazine's editorial staff. Back

NOTE 11: This is D41-16, section 113 in the original. Back

NOTE 12: This is D41-15, the chapter beginning at the second paragraph of section 332 in the original. Back

NOTE 13: At section 300 in the original. Back

NOTE 14: Letters D41-1 to D41-16. Back

NOTE 15: This is letter D53, received after December 1966, since it mentions an "interview" held by the Ummites at that date with one of the members of the "Saliano" group. Back

NOTE 16: This is letter D60. Back

NOTE 17: This is letter D49. Back

NOTE 18: This is probably D34, received by Regina Sendras, a member of the Ballena Alegre circle. Back

NOTE 19: We believe this is María Teresa Lepine de Aymerich, according to D3001 (a letter from E. Villagrasa to A. Ribera of 16 November 1967), a lady who had regularly attended Fernando Sesma's gatherings since the 1950s and who was also mentioned in letters D61 (where, owing to a possible transcription error, she appears as Marta Teresa Aymerion) and D1378. Back

NOTE 20: Both acknowledged in private that they had rejected the contact, and a confirmation by Fr. Machado can be found at the end of the interview Carlos Murciano did with him for his serial "Tras las huellas de los platillos volantes" ("On the trail of the flying saucers"), published on 5 March 1969 in ABC-Madrid. Back

NOTE 21: That date contradicts the one given in D21, which says March 1962, unless there were two different professors of Medicine. Back

NOTE 22: This is letter D140, dated 13 January 1967, known above all for its account of an Ummite device for viewing images in relief, whose operation its supposed author claimed to have filmed. Back

NOTE 23: That letter is D51, and we do not know whether anyone took the trouble to check that it really was sent to Alfonso Paso. Like almost all the other early correspondents, the playwright had also attended the Ballena Alegre gatherings in the 1950s. Back

NOTE 24: Letter D28; he also received D36, clarifying certain errors about the star Iumma that had been discussed at the gatherings. Back

NOTE 25: These are the letters included in D58. Back

NOTE 26: Letter from Villagrasa to Ribera, D3001. Back

NOTE 27: These are letters D21, so often cited, and D68-1 to D68-3, dated June, July and November 1967. Back

NOTE 28: I am referring to the first page of letter D58-5, received in April 1967. Back

NOTE 29: This is D60. Back

NOTE 30: The photos and an unsigned comment appeared on the front page of the newspaper Informaciones on 2 June 1967. Back

NOTE 31: The famous Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbours (5-10 June 1967). Back

NOTE 32: Letter D136. Back

NOTE 33: These are D137 and D138, several letters from the "typist" received by D. Garrido in June, July and November 1967 and by A. Araujo in the latter month. Back

NOTE 34: Reference D68. Back

NOTE 35: This is the report divided into five parts, D69-1 to D69-5. Back

NOTE 36: For example, this recommendation appears in letter D25. Back

NOTE 37: J. L. Jordán was the main witness in the Aluche case. Back

NOTE 38: Their commitment varied greatly: within a short time J. A. Cezón and J. Delgado left the group for one reason or another, and later, in the Erídani period, B. Labro and F. Villalba. Back

NOTE 39: A study that culminated in 1969 with the publication by both authors of the monograph entitled "Un caso perfecto" ("A perfect case", Ed. Pomaire, Barcelona), a classic, and controversial, book of Spanish UFO literature. Back

NOTE 40: It was thanks to an indiscretion by Enrique López Guerrero that the Ummo subject became public knowledge, following an interview in which he spoke, among other things, of a hidden Ummite colony in Spain, published in ABC-Sevilla on 17 September 1968 and in the following days, through the news agencies, in much of the Spanish press and some of the foreign press. Back

NOTE 41: This is letter D70. Back

NOTE 42: They are collected from D74 to D81, received in March and November 1969. Back

NOTE 43: These are letters D72, D82, D83 and D87, received in March, July and September 1969 and in February 1970, respectively. Back

NOTE 44: This is letter D73; see note 5. Back

NOTE 45: The magazine La Actualidad Española published in its issues 884 (12-12-1968), 885 (19-12-1968), 886 (26-12-1968), 888 (9-1-1969) and 893 (13-2-1969) some articles signed by F. Sinod, in which he recounts his encounter near the Alarcón reservoir (Cuenca) with an extraterrestrial called Francisco Atienza, from whom he claimed to receive telepathic messages. Back

NOTE 46: These are letters D88 and D89. Incidentally, the binary message copied in the latter was an expanded version of the one in letter D21, repeating its two numerical series. Back

NOTE 47: The meeting took place on 6 March 1969. Back

NOTE 48: This is letter D110. Back

NOTE 49: This is letter D84, whose original text was in French. Back

NOTE 50: With the difference that the text was in Italian; reference D85. Back

NOTE 51: He was, however, in contact with other young ufologists in Madrid who in 1968 had come together in the Aleph Group (Félix Ares, David G. López, Mauro Plaza and Enrique de Vicente) and in 1969 took part in founding Erídani A.E.C. Back

NOTE 52: Círculo de Estudios sobre Objetos No Identificados (Circle for the Study of Unidentified Objects), the origin of the so-called "Valencian school" of ufology. Back

NOTE 53: Acronym of Investigación Científica de la Sociedad de Amigos del Espacio (Scientific Research of the Society of Friends of Space), founded in September 1968 on the initiative of Fernando Sesma among regulars of the Ballena Alegre. Back

NOTE 54: This set of missives was received between July and August 1970, and apparently only one of them, D94, was received at Erídani's premises, with D91 uncertain. The others were addressed to Rafael Farriols (D90), Joaquín Martínez (D92-93) and Dionisio Garrido (D95). Back

NOTE 55: This is letter D97. Back

NOTE 56: These are letters D99 and D100. Back

NOTE 57: Ribera, Antonio: "El misterio de Ummo", Ed. Plaza & Janés, Barcelona, 1979: p. 78. Back

NOTE 58: Curiously, sex education according to Ummo would be continued, even in the numbered notes, in three letters received in October and December 1972, all with the reference D102. Back

NOTE 59: A few days before D100 was received, the first symposium devoted to the Ummo subject had been held in Madrid, at the Motel Osuna in Barajas, with a large attendance, for example the French biologist Jean Michel Dutuit, representing René Fouéré and his research group (the G.E.P.A.), and even, according to a rumour of the time, a supposed "Ummite" incognito. Back

NOTE 60: These are D73, received by E. López Guerrero, and D94, received by Erídani. Back

NOTE 61: The report, dated April 1971, was entitled "Las posibles operaciones de un grupo de agentes no identificados en la ciudad de Albacete de 1952 a 1954" ("The possible operations of a group of unidentified agents in the city of Albacete from 1952 to 1954"). Back

NOTE 62: These are letters D103, received in December 1972, and D109, received in April 1973 with another letter attached (D108) in microfilm format, dated August 1971 and addressed to an anonymous "gentleman from Bilbao". Back

NOTE 63: In the three letters received in February 1973 (D104) and another later one in January 1974 (D112). Back

NOTE 64: These are D105-1, sent in December 1972, and D105-2, in March 1973, both from London. Back

NOTE 65: D101, received in October 1972. Back

NOTE 66: These are D107 and D106, received in December 1972 and March 1973, respectively. The symposium was held at the Hotel Ritz in Barcelona in May 1973. Back

NOTE 67: These are D170-1 and D170-2, received in September and October 1973, as well as D113 and D214, with a "coded message" that people have tried in vain to decipher. Back

NOTE 68: This is letter D172, received in January 1974. Back

NOTE 69: These are letters D114 and D173, received in March and December 1976. Back

NOTE 70: "El misterio de Ummo"; see note 57. Back

NOTE 71: López Guerrero, Enrique: "Mirando a la lejanía del Universo", Ed. Plaza & Janés, Barcelona, 1978. And Vignati, Alejandro: "Tercer tipo: Contacto extraterrestre", Ed. A.T.E., Barcelona, 1978. Back

NOTE 72: This is letter D116. Back

NOTE 73: Letter D117, received in June 1979. Back

NOTE 74: Acronym of the Centro de Investigaciones Metapsíquicas (Centre for Metapsychic Research), Alicante. Back

NOTE 75: Such as Fr. Enrique López Guerrero, Rafael Farriols, José Luis Jordán Peña, J.J. Benítez, Antonio José Alés and Antonio Ribera among the best known, but also other, more discreet researchers such as José Antonio Corno and Franco Muela. The French physicist and illustrator Jean Pierre Petit also attended as an observer; his interest in the Ummite communications would grow in the following years. This meeting was held at the Hotel Babieca in Playa de San Juan, and its title commemorated the 30th anniversary of the Ummites' supposed first arrival on Earth. Back

NOTE 76: See note 59. Back

NOTE 77: These are letters D119 and D118. Back

NOTE 78: This is letter D174. Back

NOTE 79: In issue no. 48 of the Barcelona magazine Mundo Desconocido. Back

NOTE 80: Ribera, Antonio: "Ummo: la increíble verdad", Ed. Plaza & Janés, Barcelona, 1985: pp. 329-330. This is the second monograph the Catalan researcher devoted to the subject, and the letter was catalogued as D120. Back

NOTE 81: Two of those involved in that "experiment" gave their version in the specialist magazine published in Santander, Cuadernos de Ufología: Heriberto Janosch (no. 5, 1989) and Adalberto C. Ujvari (no. 7, 1990). Back

NOTE 82: The identities of at least two of the "pranksters" are known, G. L. from Alicante and J.F. from Madrid, whose motives are curious since they believed in the reality of Ummo. Back

NOTE 83: This is letter D176. Back

NOTE 84: Domínguez, Juan: "El Pluricosmos" (with a foreword by Dr Juan Aguirre), Ed. Librería Ágora, Málaga, 1983. Back

NOTE 85: These are letters D190 and D198. There are serious indications that they were put in Dr Aguirre's letterbox by the same person who delivered the 1983 letter by hand at the Colegio Mayor. Back

NOTE 86: In Barcelona a group similar to the Madrid one had formed around Rafael Farriols, including among others Hiltrud Nordlin, Javier Penelas, José María Pons and Mario Serra. Back

NOTE 87: Like the one that came with letter D119. Back

NOTE 88: These are letters D392 and D393, received by Luís Jiménez Marhuenda, and D2655, addressed to Juan Aguirre. Back

NOTE 89: This is D357-1. See notes 60 to 62. Back

NOTE 90: This is report D357-2. Back

NOTE 91: Catalogued as letter D788. Back

NOTE 92: This is report D731. Back

NOTE 93: See note 64. Back

NOTE 94: Letters D539, D541 and D540, respectively. Back

NOTE 95: He is not clearly identified with the commercial expert of the first period (see note 6), but he does mention the intermediary who supposedly received the recording from the "Ummites", a woman who called herself Mari Sol. This person would later telephone several members of the group on behalf of Ummo and deliver various letters in person. Back

NOTE 96: Unpublished texts. Back

NOTE 97: This is report D791. Back

NOTE 98: This is report D792-1 to D792-3, whose instalments were accompanied by several letters warning of possible spies, rules and dates for circulating the report among the members of the group, the possible rejection by some of them, rules and place for its reading, etc. Back

NOTE 99: See note 15. Back

NOTE 100: This is report D1378, likewise accompanied by a letter with a list of the people who were to attend its reading, with a promise to keep its content confidential. Back

NOTE 101: This refers to the controversy over the sources used by Juan José Benítez for the first books of his Caballo de Troya (Trojan Horse) series, with articles published in Interviú in issues 602 (25-11-1987), 609 (13-1-1988) and 612 (13-2-1988). Back

NOTE 102: These are letters D378, D379, D381 and D399. Back

NOTE 103: Which in the end was published not in Interviú but in ABC-Madrid thanks to the good offices of Ricardo Lizcano, a friend of Juan Aguirre. Back

NOTE 104: Unpublished texts. Back

NOTE 105: This is letter D473, widely distributed among UFO researchers, which faithfully followed the instructions of the "Ummites", with paragraphs copied word for word, in letters D468 and D470 received in October 1988. Back

NOTE 106: Such as the first circular letter received in nineteen years (see notes 49 and 50), D488, written in English and sent from Aarburg (Switzerland) in November 1988 to 237 supposed recipients, of whom only about twenty Spanish and foreign researchers are confirmed. Back

NOTE 107: Letter D490-D500. Back

NOTE 108: On 18 November 1988 the newspaper El País published an announcement entitled "Discussion on the Shroud of Turin", called for two days later in the Salón Serrano of the Hotel Sanvy in Madrid. Back

NOTE 109: Letter D499. See note 98. Back

NOTE 110: This is the report identified as D491. Back

NOTE 111: See note 107. Back

NOTE 112: See note 104. Back

NOTE 113: Letter D1492, written in Italian and sent from London to 106 theoretical recipients, of whom only about 20 correspondents are known to have received it (see note 105). Back

NOTE 114: This is letter D1551. When the person who called herself "Mari Sol" came to light in 1992, she maintained for some time that the Essen meeting had not only taken place but that she had been present. Back

NOTE 115: Letter D1751, received by Rafael Farriols in January 1991. Back

NOTE 116: Petit, Jean Pierre: "Enquête sur des Extraterrestres qui sont déjà parmi nous", Ed. Albin Michel, Paris, 1991. Back

NOTE 117: The first two are reports D1994 and D2563, written in French and received in September 1991 and June 1992, respectively. These messages, like others the French physicist says he received later, are surrounded by certain doubts as to their authenticity, among other reasons because they lack the identifying symbol. Back

NOTE 118: D2583, sent from Cuba, although the exact place has not been disclosed. Back

NOTE 119: This was the International Forum of the Occult Sciences, opened at the Mercado Puerta de Toledo in Madrid on 6 March 1992 (ABC-Madrid, 7-3-1992); the two members of the group were Jorge Barrenechea and J. B., and the speaker was Javier Sierra. Back

NOTE 120: The first public confession of being the author of the Ummite fraud was published by J. L. Jordán himself in the sceptical magazine La Alternativa Racional (no. 29, Summer 1993), in an article entitled "UMMO: Otro mito que hace CRASH" ("UMMO: another myth that goes CRASH"). Enquiries to the editors and contributors of that publication at the time have not been able to establish whether the author sent his text before or after the letters he sent to R. Farriols. Around the same time he made another confession of his activities to Javier Sierra, which remains unpublished, and in 1997 Jordán made new statements to Manuel Carballal, which the latter included in the bulletin El Ojo Crítico and also in his book "Los expedientes secretos – El CESID, el control de las creencias y los fenómenos inexplicables", Ed. Planeta, Barcelona, 2001. Back

NOTE 121: The dossier was entitled "UMMO: la historia interminable" ("UMMO: the neverending story"), with contributions by, among others, Alejandro Agostinelli, Carles Berché, Ignacio Cabria, Manuel Carballal, José Antonio Cezón, Luís R. González and the present writer. It was published in Cuadernos de Ufología, no. 16-17, 2nd series, 1994. Back

NOTE 122: Published under the same title by Ed. D'Arbó Productions, Barcelona, 1999. Back

NOTE 123: These are letters D4779/D5088 and D4783/5089. It is worth noting that everyone approached by Rafael Farriols, with the exception of Juan Domínguez, who considered the Ummo affair fraudulent, answered positively, and some, such as Juan Aguirre, even made their participation conditional on freedom of information, in contrast with the secrecy the group had maintained in earlier stages. Back

NOTE 124: "Pollion, Jean" (pseudonym): "Ummo – De vrais extraterrestres! Panorama complété par le Précis du systéme idéophonémique", Eds. Aldane, Cointrin (Switzerland), 2002. Back

NOTE 125: The indications, confirmed by their Spanish friends, are that all or almost all the French correspondents are in one way or another connected with the website Ummo-Sciences. Back

NOTE 126: Identified as NR13 to NR15, NR17 and NR18, received in April, June, September and December 2003. Back

NOTE 127: Letter NR15, which gives 9 and 10 May 2003 as the dates of the three "landings". Back

NOTE 128: Letter NR20. Back

NOTE 129: Among its members we may mention the Catalan nucleus around Rafael Farriols, in Madrid J. B., who had rejoined, and Manuel R., and Javier F. in Galicia. Back

NOTE 130: Both at the Centro Cultural Buenavista (Salamanca district), part of the Madrid municipal network. Back

NOTE 131: A reflection by Ignacio Darnaude, in D5143. Back

NOTE 132: This is the researcher Antonio Luís Moyano, whose admiration for José Luís Jordán is evident in the dedication of his latest book "Íker, el mago del misterio", Eds. Nowtilus, Madrid, 2009. Back

NOTE 133: Benítez, Juan José: "El hombre que susurraba a los <<ummitas>>", Ed. Planeta, Barcelona, 2007. A review that complements its information was written by Luís R. González in Cuadernos de Ufología, no. 32, 3rd series, 2007. Back

NOTE 134: See note 75. Back

NOTE 135: See notes 16 and 28 to 30. Back

NOTE 136: NR21. Back