Spain is already looking to the sky. Or at least, getting ready to. But not everyone in the country will see the same thing. The total solar eclipse on 12 August is, meteorologists and astronomers agree, a phenomenon that will literally split the country in two: those who will see the Sun disappear completely and those who will be left at the threshold.
ADVEReadNOWISEMENT
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Outside the path: Madrid, Barcelona and much of the south
The path of totality, the narrow corridor where the Moon covers the Sun 100%, crosses the peninsula from west to east and takes in capitals such as La Coruña, Oviedo, León, Bilbao, Zaragoza, Valencia and Palma. Outside that track, the rest of the country will see a partial eclipse, deeper or shallower depending on the distance from the central line.
Madrid and Barcelona are the two big absentees. The band passes right between the two cities, so residents will experience an afternoon with the Sun almost completely covered, up to 99% in some places, but without those few seconds of total darkness that turn the event into something unlike anything else.
Huesca and Zamora lie right on the edge of totality, meaning that the uneven lunar profile could make the key moment imperceptible to the naked eye. And the entire southern half of the peninsula will, quite simply, have to settle for a partial eclipse.
The enemy nobody can control: the clouds
Being in the right strip is no guarantee of anything if the sky does not cooperate. The Cantabrian coast, Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, has a meteorological track record that is not very favourable at this time of year, with clear-sky probabilities that in some analyses do not exceed 50%.
The latest forecasts point to better chances in the west and interior of Galicia, Castile and León and the Balearic Islands, although the models can still shift up to the last minute. For anyone who has travelled hundreds of kilometres chasing totality, a poorly placed cloud on the western horizon can ruin in seconds what geography had granted them.
Those who will keep working as the sky goes dark
There is no special permit in Spain to leave your workplace during the eclipse, and labour legislation does not treat it as a force majeure event. So drivers, hospitality staff or construction workers on shift this afternoon will, in principle, continue their working day while everything around them stops to look up.
At most, the moment of totality, barely a minute or so in the best locations, can be fitted into the 15-minute break laid down in the Workers’ Statute for working days of more than six hours, but that requires prior agreement with the employer.
The DGT, in fact, has set up a special operation in anticipation of traffic jams in the busiest areas, so a large part of road personnel will have a much busier afternoon than usual.
For safety, it is better not to look at it directly
Some people could watch it and choose not to, or should not. Ophthalmologists have been insisting for weeks that looking at the Sun without ISO 12312-2 certified glasses, not even for a few seconds, and not with normal sunglasses, X-ray films or homemade filters, can cause solar retinopathy: a burn on the retina that does not hurt, is not noticeable at the time and can take between 4 and 48 hours to appear as a dark spot in the centre of your vision.
The ONCE Social Group has distributed nearly two million certified glasses across the country precisely to avoid accidents, and ophthalmology societies recommend that young children in particular should not watch the event without an adult directly supervising them. Anyone without certified protection to hand really has two safe options: either not to look, or to watch it via a ‘streaming’.
ESA will provide two live feeds. The first will be the official broadcast, produced from the Javalambre Astrophysical Observatory in Teruel. It will include live interviews, explanations, images and information about eclipses, as well as live coverage of totality at 20:31. It will be in English and can be followed via ESA Web TV and YouTube.
ESA’s second live feed will show images captured by telescopes, without commentary or explanations: just the eclipse live, also available on YouTube.
For its part, NASA will also offer its own streaming, starting at 19:15. The broadcast will show different views of the eclipse as it moves along its path and will include interviews with experts. It can be followed both on NASA’s website and on YouTube, with links to different locations where totality can be observed, such as Iceland at 19:45 or Spain at 20:28.
A phenomenon you can listen to as well
For blind and partially sighted people, an eclipse has traditionally been a spectacle from which they were, by definition, excluded. That changes this year with the Inclusive Eclipse project, led by the CSIC research council, which is distributing LightSound devices at different viewing points around the country.
The device converts the intensity of sunlight into sound in real time: a tone that gradually fades and lowers in pitch as the Moon covers the solar disc, almost disappearing during totality. It is not the same as seeing it, but it is a way to follow the same moment that millions of people will be spending this afternoon looking up at the sky to share.
Those who do not want to watch it
Not everyone missing out on the eclipse this afternoon does so because they cannot watch it: some people simply prefer not to go out and look. In recent weeks, several hoaxes have circulated on social media mixing the event with conspiracy theories, from warnings about supposed neurological problems caused by observing it to the claim, without any scientific basis, that the Earth would lose gravity for seven seconds, attributed to a non-existent leaked NASA document.
Fact-checkers have spent days dismantling these messages, but they keep being repeated, and some literally warn people “not to go out” during the eclipse. For part of the population, that constant murmur is enough to make them stay at home with the blinds down.
Then there are those who do not fear the event itself, but what surrounds it. Villages lying in the path of totality have seen an increase of more than 800% in tourism searches compared with a normal year, and many locals in those areas are already saying they will spend the afternoon away from the crowds, leaving the best spots to watch the Sun to the thousands of visitors who have ended up clogging roads and accommodation. For them, the eclipse is less an astronomical spectacle than an annual invasion they prefer to avoid.