Maneru entity encounter — February 25, 1976

The Mañeru story concerns five schoolchildren on an excursion near the village in Navarre. Although the imported catalogue dates it February 25, 1976, the local magazine Calle Mayor’s retrospective identifies the afternoon as February 18. Its account notes that La Gaceta del Norte had already published the story on February 22, making the later catalogue date problematic. The plate therefore uses the securely supported month rather than asserting the imported day. The original story placed a shining disc-like object over or in a cereal field beyond the El Ristro rise. The children described a domed craft and a very tall, black-clad figure with a small head and heavy-looking feet; catalogue versions add a flash and a rapid departure. Their teacher did not witness an occupant. According to the retrospective, she asked the children to draw what they had seen after they returned, with one drawing on the blackboard while the others contributed impressions. Large prints were subsequently reported in the soil. Investigators Félix de Ares de Blas and María Carmen Garmendia initially considered the case potentially genuine, partly because they believed the children’s separate accounts and drawings agreed. Their inquiry also warned that publicity could have influenced the story. Calle Mayor interviewed the original children in 1999. Their recollections differed substantially: one remembered only the others shouting, another suggested mutual suggestion or an ordinary aircraft or balloon, and another retained a limited memory of something unexplained. One participant said they had made up a story and that the supposedly independent drawings had been influenced by a UFO-enthusiast classmate. The elderly teacher reportedly considered a childhood invention likely but remained cautious. These later statements materially weaken the original account; they must accompany its striking earlier imagery.