In a total solar eclipse, the difference between 92% and 100% is everything.
At 92% the sky goes a bit weird and those with glasses see a small solar crescent. Curmudgeons remain unimpressed.
At 95% the solar disc is still aflame but sunset appears to be approaching early.
At 98% the daylight dims and, if you're watching safely, the crescent shrinks to a toenail.
At 99% the horizon darkens, distant streetlamps come alight and everyone notices something is afoot.
But only at 100% does the magic happen as the sun blinks out, the moon is surrounded by a fiery corona and night comes to day.
This solar spectacle is like nothing else you will ever see, should you be lucky enough to ever see it. I'd only previously seen the clouded-out version courtesy of Cornwall 1999, but Spain2026 thankfully delivered the full-on phenomenon with not a cloud in the sky from start to finish. How lucky was I?
Apologies, I wasn't focusing on taking great photos, I was watching the 64 second miracle with the naked eye instead.
To see a total solar eclipse you need to be in the right place, which in this case was a 200-mile-wide stripe across northern Spain. Leon and Zaragoza fell under the shadow, Madrid and Pamplona just missed. Ideally you wanted to be near the centre of the stripe, thus Burgos got a near-max 1 minute 48 seconds of totality and Bilbao barely 30 seconds. You also need to be in the right place at the right time, which in this case was the hour before sunset on August 12th 2026. You also need a clear enough view of the sun at the precise moment of totality, which across Spain was potentially problematic because the evening sun would be less than 10° above the western horizon. One mountain in the wrong place and the sun would have set before the magic moment, which scuppered a couple of viewpoints I'd been scouting.
For my chosen location I picked Vitoria-Gasteiz, the Basque capital, because that's surrounded by a flattish plain before the sierras begin so the peaks wouldn't get in the way. It's also the city BestMate'sOtherHalf hails from so we had accommodation and no need to travel on the day. Traffic's usually OK before a total eclipse but clogs up immediately after totality finishes, and with Spain's limited network of main roads you don't want to get stuck on an autoroute for hours as night descends. The local government even banned all heavy lorries from travelling between 5pm and midnight to keep the carriageways clear. Far better to be able to walk to your viewing site, which in this case was the 10th floor of a Vitoria-Gasteiz hotel. BestMate'sOtherHalf'sBestMate is the hotel manager so wangled us into the sweet spot on the roof, a terrace aligned so perfectly westward that it might as well have been a solar stage.
Vitoria-Gasteiz has a great backhistory when it comes to the observation of solar eclipses. It was one of the locations used by international scientists to view the total solar eclipse of July 18th 1860, the first time an attempt was made to confirm the origin of the flares seen at totality. The British astronomer Warren De la Rue took his newly invented photoheliograph instead to the village of Rivabellosa, 15 miles to the southwest, and successfully photographed the prominences seen around the moon. By comparing photographs taken in different locations, which looked identical, he was able to confirm for the first time that the flares were not a lunar phenomenon and must come from the sun.
A small pyramidal monument has been erected where the Vitoria-Gasteiz astronomers gathered. The city has since expanded and their viewpoint is now adrift within a small park in an outer suburb, with a small primary school at the foot of the slope and several football pitches across the street. You couldn't have watched the 2026 eclipse from here because a line of trees now blocks the evening sun, so we didn't try, but it's nice that the adjacent street has been named Astronomo kalea (Astronomer Street).
A hotel roof proved the perfect location this time, but a experiencing a total solar eclipse isn't just about being in the right place at the right time at the right elevation, it's also totally about the weather. When the first local forecast popped up two weeks before the event it was for a showery evening, meh, but the following day the forecast switched to wall-to-wall sunshine and so it stayed right up until the day of the eclipse. With totality consistently scheduled for the middle of three cloudless days I almost stopped worrying, but even one rogue cumulus can totally wreck the experience so I was never quite at ease. As it was August 12th dawned hot, sunny and clear with a forecast high of 36°C and I genuinely couldn't have hoped for better.
There must have been at least 100 of us on the roof terrace, most with locally-sourced eclipse glasses and me with my official Royal Greenwich pair from 1999. The first bite came on the lower right at 7.32pm, eventually growing as more of the sun was eaten away. Normally such progress is asymmetric but on this occasion the nibbles were making directly for the centre of the disc, hence a total eclipse was due. It wasn't until maybe ten minutes before totality that anything about the sky looked weird, and not until five that something was atmospherically awry. As the final minutes ticked down I couldn't quite believe my great gamble was about to pay off, no clouds anywhere, just a view for miles towards the mountains and an inevitable syzygy as the moon's shadow came sweeping in from the coast.
The northern sky darkened noticeably and streetlamps came on in the distance, yet still the sun was a golden sliver outshining any man-made source. Thirty seconds before 8.28pm it still wasn't evident any solar sorcery would be happening. Then suddenly, precisely when predicted, the yellow sun blinked and fizzed and metamorphosed into a black disc surrounded by a golden halo. Totality is safe to watch with the naked eye so those in the know whipped off their specs and stared at the inverted sun hanging menacingly in the sky. You could easily imagine how primitive societies would have been in total awe of such a spectacle, and also wonder how on earth they ever managed to predict one.
The black sun blazed beautifully in the centre of my view, the solar flares spreading in all directions as they had from here in 1860. I knew I only had 1 minute and 4 seconds to enjoy the spectacle, a minuscule fraction of a lifetime, but somehow it seemed to continue for much longer. A light plane swooped across the town and at one point added its silhouette to the disc, which would have made quite the photo if I'd had a decent lens. At our elevation it was impossible to judge the reaction of local wildlife, who'd likely imagined sunset had arrived early, but it was perfectly possible to scan a broad horizon as the area of relative darkness slowly shifted. Initially the darkest area was to the north, then briefly equidistant, then darker to the south as the moon's shadow sped inexorably onwards.
As the end of totality approached the famous 'diamond ring' could be seen, the sun's fire searing through valleys on the moon's lower rim to create a small strong burst of light. Then with a subliminal flicker the full glare returned (so glasses back on), the tiniest crescent again capable of lighting up the sky. It never got properly dark, only unnaturally very dim, and now very gradually much brighter as the whole phenomenon re-enacted in reverse. A brief round of applause accompanied the end of totality and then all the chatter on the rooftop was about what we'd just seen, with the remainder of the partial eclipse generally ignored. The 90%-99% phase that had so impressed during the build-up barely drew attention during the wind-down, despite the extent of obscuration being better than any future eclipse expected here this century. Once you've seen 100%, nothing else will ever do.
I stayed watching longer than most, then retired to the bar for a celebratory drink. I also permitted myself a congratulatory whoop because not only had the stars aligned, the weather had played ball too. I made a point of checking the cloud cover at 8.28pm on all the other days of my holiday, and can confirm that on six out of the ten days that particular minute would have been fully clouded out. One day out of ten had intermittent cumulus near the horizon so might have been dodgy and on only three days was the sky perfectly clear. I'd played the Spanish weather and succeeded against odds of just 30%, without which luck I might still never have seen totality and be agonising about whether to try again.
In a total solar eclipse, the difference between 99.9% and 100% is everything. And I am so thankful to have enjoyed everything, because it really was amazing.
