Icefalls investigated by Fundación Anomalía

	The Foundation Board and some members of "Cuadernos de Ufología" collective by the granted prizes.

In the threshold of the second anniversary of the strange ice rock shower phenomenon which took place in numerous Spanish locations in January 2000, the not-for-profit organization Anomaly Foundation (Apartado 5041, 39080 Santander, Spain) will finance a documentary compilation on this subject. "Hydroaerolites: the enigma which fell out of the blue" will be the title of a report which is being prepared under the editorship of telecommunications engineer Manuel Borraz. It received the 2001 "Universitas" scholarship, sponsored by the Foundation with the participation of the Washington-based Fund for UFO Research. It is trusted that the mystery which impacted many Spaniards and world-wide media, becoming the target for hoaxes and speculations as well as for many esoteric explanations, can be finally placed into its real historical context and proper perspective with this new publication.

This set of controversial episodes, which were followed by cloned events in Italy and Holland, had at the start the simple journalist name of iceblocks, but the Foundation provided the more scientific denomination of hydroaerolites, meaning rocks made of water which fall from the sky.

Manuel Borraz, the leader of the project, declared that "one of the objectives of this collective monograph will be to reflect the present status of the question about the origin of these masses of ice which allegedly fell in many scattered villages". As it is well-known, many of these occurrences proved to be frauds. Although there were some experts who pointed to ordinary meteorological origins such as hail or the natural production of ice on aircraft, this phenomenon arose considerable interest among the mainstream Spanish scientific community with an intense debate, still unresolved, which resulted in the creation of a research committee by the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), the upper scientific research council of the Spanish academia.

The Anomaly Foundation was founded 1997 with the aim to fund the scientific-oriented investigation of unusual aerial phenomena, commonly called UFOs, to preserve the related documentation gathered in Spain in the last 50 years, to provide scholarships, grants and prizes, and to publish specialized journals and books.

On the weekend of November 1 to 4, the Foundation Board and collaborators met in Valencia. Four field work funds were granted to Spanish researchers who during this year accomplished good case investigations of UFO experiences: Marcos Benítez Campillo (Proyecto CREBE, Cádiz), Antonio Salinas (SIB, Granada), Juan Carlos Victorio (Guipuzcoa) and Carlos León (Asturias).

In the last years, the Anomaly Foundation, whose web site www.anomalia.org has already received more than 100,000 visits, has become a routine reference on this subject-matter, specially for the university environment, because of its development of data bases on UFO report data, scientific references bibliographies, etc.