The ruling is dated August 19, so the deadline may have already expired; however, the exact date on which Defense formally received the resolution does not appear in the consulted public documentation and does not allow for speaking yet of non-compliance.
El Español reported this Saturday the existence and content of the file.
The Transparency and Good Governance Council estimated a claim against Defense and ordered it to provide information on the so-called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, FANI, the designation that has replaced the traditional term UFO in official documentation.
The resolution R CTBG 0867/2026 officially appears among the resolutions estimated by the Council during August and is addressed to the Ministry of Defense. The agency itself summarizes the matter with three key words: defense, FANI, and information, and notes that the origin of the claim was the silence of the Administration.
The resolution establishes that Defense must provide the information within a maximum period of ten business days.
More than three weeks have passed since then.
If Defense received the notification that same day or on immediately subsequent dates, the ten business days would have already ended at the beginning of September.
For example, if the notification had occurred on August 19, the deadline would have concluded approximately on September 2, excluding Saturdays and Sundays.
But legally the clock does not necessarily start running on the day a resolution is signed.
It begins when it is notified to the obligated agency.
And the exact date on which the Ministry formally received R CTBG 0867/2026 does not appear in the public information that Demócrata has been able to consult.
This detail prevents affirming, as of today, that Defense has failed to comply.
It does allow for pointing out that, unless a considerably later notification than the signing occurred, the deadline should already be expired.
It is also not publicly recorded that Defense has delivered the documentation.
What does Transparency want to know exactly about UFOs
The request that originated the file goes far beyond consulting old sightings.
The citizen requested to know what documentation, technical reports, administrative files, and investigations the State currently holds on the so-called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.
The request specifically targets the Ministry of Defense and the Air and Space Force.
It also aims to know if there are other bodies of the General Administration of the State that safeguard similar documentation.
And it raises a third issue that is especially sensitive: what is the classification status of those documents.
That is to say, what material remains secret or reserved.
The most interesting question: if Spain retains new files
Spain has already made a considerable part of its historical archives public.
The so-called UFO File began to be declassified in 1991 and can currently be consulted through the Virtual Defense Library.
The collection includes 80 files and around 1,900 pages of documentation related to sightings recorded in Spanish airspace.
The public archives cover phenomena from 1962 to 1995.
The new claim precisely points to the gap that remains afterwards.
More than thirty years have passed.
The question is whether Defense has continued to record, investigate, or document aerial phenomena that it could not initially identify.
The resolution does not state that those files exist.
It compels the Ministry to say whether they exist.
From San Javier to Morón: what Spain has made public
The historical files begin with a case that occurred in San Javier, Murcia, in 1962.
The public series ends in 1995 with documentation related to Morón, Sevilla.
Between both extremes, there are military reports, testimonies from pilots and citizens, sketches, investigations, and internal communications.
The declassification did not mean that Defense considered those phenomena to be extraterrestrial.
A UFO was, literally, a flying object that could not be identified initially.
Many files ended up having conventional explanations.
Others simply retained the description of the observed phenomenon with the information available at that time.
Transparency also wants to know what remains classified
The request contains another layer.
It is not enough to identify the files.
The citizen requests to know the administrative status of each document and, in those cases subject to classification, the degree of protection applied.
It also requests to know when they were classified and which body made the decision.
And it adds another particularly current question: whether Defense plans to review that material to study a future declassification.
That is why the eventual response from the Ministry may be more interesting than a simple list of sightings.
It can offer a first photograph of which part of the Spanish file on FANI remains closed to the public.
Defense did not initially respond to the citizen
The file was born precisely because the Ministry did not respond to the access request.
The request was submitted in March.
In the absence of a response, the citizen went to the Transparency Council.
The Council then opened the procedure and ended up estimating his claim.
In its official listing, the CTBG continues to identify resolution 0867/2026 with the word "silence," a reference to the administrative behavior that gave rise to the procedure.
That should not be confused with the current state of compliance.
That the resolution appears labeled as "silence" means that Defense did not respond in the initial phase.
Defense can invoke limits related to national security, defense, or the protection of classified information.
That does not mean it can remain silent.
If it considers that certain documents should not be made public, it will have to justify it according to transparency and official secrets legislation.
There may also be a middle ground.
A document may contain parts whose disclosure is sensitive and others that can indeed be delivered.
The general principle regarding transparency allows for partial access when it is not necessary to protect the entirety of the content because they may affect the security of airspace.
The United States has reopened the debate
The issue coincides with a new international stage of interest in UAP, the term used in the United States.
The Pentagon and the U.S. Congress have developed specific mechanisms in recent years to collect reports from pilots and military personnel and review historical documentation.
Spain does not publicly have an equivalent structure with the same visibility.
The resolution of the Council may offer for the first time an updated picture of what is happening here.