Fernando Sesma

Early Life and UFO Awakening

Fernando Sesma Manzano was a Spanish civil servant employed by the Telegraph Office in Madrid with particular interests in cryptography and graphology. In the early 1950s, he began writing about UFOs for Spanish newspapers, including columns discussing George Adamski's controversial contactee accounts. His journalism sparked enough public interest that Sesma gathered followers and, in 1954, founded Los Amigos de los Visitantes del Espacio (Friends of Space Visitors)—one of Europe's first organized UFO research societies.

La Ballena Alegre and the Madrid Circle

Sesma's group became known for weekly gatherings at La Ballena Alegre (the Merry Whale), a basement café in downtown Madrid where journalists, playwrights, priests, and intellectuals convened to hear Sesma's compelling lectures on extraterrestrial visitation. Unlike typical UFO clubs focused on sightings and analysis, Sesma's gatherings emphasized philosophical and spiritual dimensions of contact, shaped by his background in the occult and his interest in deciphering hidden messages.

In 1955, Sesma published Los Platillos Volantes Vienen de Otros Mundos (Flying Saucers Come From Other Worlds), establishing himself as a public voice in Spanish ufology. However, his reputation as an eccentric believer in mystical and esoteric interpretations of UFO phenomena limited his academic credibility.

Contact and the Ummite Correspondence

Sesma's trajectory shifted decisively in 1961 when he reported his first personal UFO sighting. By 1962, he began receiving anonymous letters purporting to come from intelligent extraterrestrials—initially identifying themselves as being from the planet Auco, orbiting Alpha Centauri. Communication was never direct or telepathic; instead, Sesma received typewritten documents posted in manila envelopes, often accompanied by brief telephone calls.

From 1965 onward, the volume and sophistication of these letters intensified dramatically. Sesma received hundreds of lengthy typewritten documents allegedly authored by the Ummites—a civilization from the planet Ummo (also orbiting Alpha Centauri). The letters described Ummite history, technology, social organization, ethics, and philosophy. Unlike contactees such as Adamski or Van Tassel, Sesma's contact was entirely mediated through anonymous written correspondence, making verification and authentication impossibly difficult.

The UMMO Phenomenon

Sesma compiled the Ummite correspondence and published Ummo, Otro Planeta Habitado (Ummo: Another Inhabited Planet) in 1967. The book presented an extensive picture of an advanced civilization that claimed to have been observing Earth for millennia and sought to communicate warnings and philosophical teachings. The documents were technically detailed, discussing propulsion systems, atmospheric phenomena, and cosmological theories, yet they often read as philosophical treatises rather than scientific specifications.

What distinguished the UMMO case from other contactee phenomena was its scale and consistency. Over two decades, multiple Spanish and French ufologists received similar documents. The correspondence showed thematic continuity, internal logical coherence, and an encyclopedic breadth that would have been extraordinarily difficult for a lone hoaxer to maintain.

On June 1, 1967, Sesma made a bold public prediction: a spacecraft would appear near Madrid at specified coordinates. Between 30 and 40 members of his club reported witnessing an object at the predicted location and time, giving the prediction apparent corroboration—though documentation of these sightings remains fragmentary.

Legacy and Credibility Questions

Despite his significance, Sesma was marginalized by the Spanish UFO community, dismissed as a "wild contactee" and occultist. His 1967 book received limited distribution and scant academic attention. The UMMO affair itself remains one of ufology's most polarizing cases.

Skeptics view the Ummite letters as an elaborate hoax or role-playing exercise, possibly perpetrated by Spanish intellectuals as an art project or thought experiment. The anonymous nature and pseudointellectual flavor of some documents lend credence to this interpretation.

Conversely, believers argue that the sheer volume, technical content, thematic depth, and distribution across multiple researchers—coordinated over 20+ years—exceeds what amateur hoaxers could plausibly achieve. They point to apparent foreknowledge in the documents of scientific discoveries not yet public, and to the philosophical coherence of Ummite teachings as evidence of genuine contact.

Final Assessment

Fernando Sesma died in the 1980s (exact date uncertain), having never resolved the question of the Ummites' authenticity. His legacy is that of a pivotal but underappreciated figure in European UFO history. The UMMO affair demonstrates an alternative model of contactee phenomenon—not charismatic face-to-face encounters, but rather an impersonal epistolary dialogue mediated through anonymous typewritten documents. This case remains unsolved and deeply contested, epitomizing the interpretive challenges at the heart of UFO research.