The Manises UFO incident

On 11 November 1979 a Spanish airliner carrying 109 passengers made an emergency landing at Manises, Valencia, after its crew reported being pursued by unidentified objects.

On 11 November 1979, flight JK-297, a Caravelle of Transportes Aéreos Españoles bound for Tenerife, landed as an emergency at the military airport at Manises, in Valencia. It carried 109 passengers. Wikipedia places the aircraft over Ibiza when the trouble began, and Mallorca Diario describes red lights appearing in the sky before the flight changed course.

Wikipedia records that a Mirage F1 of the Spanish Air Force took off from the Los Llanos air base at Albacete to identify the phenomenon, after attempts to contact it drew a blank. The pilot, Captain Fernando Cámara, had to reach Mach 1.4 to get a visual contact with what he perceived as a truncated cone of bright, changing colour. The object soon disappeared from sight. He was then told of a new radar echo, possibly near Sagunto, Valencia.

Three days later, on 14 November 1979, the newspaper Le Parisien Libere reported on the passengers. Citing testimony gathered by the Spanish press, it said most of them said they had seen nothing, and that they accused the pilot of covering a technical failure with fanciful stories. Mallorca Diario later called it the most significant case in the history of Spanish ufology.