Ribera, Antonio

Antonio Ribera (15 Januray 1920 - 24 September 2001) probably was the best known Spanish UFOlogist and is credited as the main source of the UMMO material.

The Origins of UMMO

Starting in 1965, the Spanish UFO enthusiast Fernando Sesma began to receive by mail a number of technical papers supposedly written by the OEMII — the inhabitants of UMMO. The network of correspondents expanded to about 20 people residing in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, and other Spanish cities. The envelopes, however, contained no valid forwarding address, making it a one-way communication system. Because Sesma had a reputation for being a wild contactee, his 1967 book was largely ignored by the Spanish UFO community.

The Planet UMMO

According to the papers, UMMO is the name of a planet orbiting IUMMA, known in our astronomical catalogues as the star Wolf 424, located 14.6 light years from the Sun. The Ummites told Antonio Ribera that the planet is quite similar to Earth, and that its inhabitants are extremely telepathic and believe strongly in the existence of the soul and in a Creator God.

Ribera's Key Writings

Ribera co-wrote with Rafael Farriols the classic book "Un Caso Perfecto" (A Perfect Case), which chronicled two UFO landings in the mid-1960s near Madrid. Later, in 1979, he wrote "El Mensaje de UMMO" (The UMMO Message), which reprinted many of the most interesting technical and philosophical papers, and included an appendix with an UMMO–Spanish-French Dictionary containing 403 words of the alleged alien language.

The Madrid Sightings

The UMMO affair reached prominence with two landings on the outskirts of Madrid in 1966 and 1967. On February 6, 1966, half a dozen witnesses in the Madrid suburb of Aluche observed a perfectly round saucer with three legs, roughly 33 feet in diameter. According to one witness, the saucer's underside exhibited a Uranus-like emblem - the symbol of UMMO - which none of the witnesses had known about beforehand. The UFO left three distinct landing marks and burnt grass.

The second incident involved seven controversial photographs of San Jose de Valderas, which clearly showed the UMMO symbol. This incident had even been predicted several days before it happened in a written message mailed to correspondents, including precise geographical coordinates of the landing.

The Content of the Letters

A steady stream of highly technical papers dealing with the nature of the universe and the basis for intelligent life in the cosmos continued for some time. Unlike most contactee cases, the UMMO material was notably absent of messianic messages of doom and salvation.

Was it a hoax?

In 1993, José Luis Jordán Peña , "confessed" that he was the actual author of the UMMO material, and that it all was a hoax. Several researchers, however, pointed out quite a few inconsistencies in Peña's explanation, and many who knew the material well did not simply accept the confession at face value. The sheer volume and technical depth of the correspondence - over 1,740 pages of UMMO contact notes - led many to question whether one person could truly have orchestrated it all alone.

Ribera himself never wavered in his belief in the authenticity of the contacts, and the UMMO case remains one of the most elaborate and debated episodes in European UFO history.