Our home, which we call Earth, where the planet was, was a ball of various types of rock and possibly water (actually, given the imaginable temperatures, the sky), wandering through space, lonely or abandoned, delighted by an energy source that provides heat and light, could not arise in life.
It is our vital life as we know it, it is the star, the Sunhome to thermonuclear processes that generate heat and light energy. Humans and otherwise, animals and plants, we are used to the daily appearance and disappearance of the Sun, and we understand why this happens.
But that this light has suddenly disappeared in the middle of the day, for a short time, has been during much of history Homo sapiens something as surprising as the earth, the source of all types of hypotheses (legends, myths, acts of imaginary gods…), which are explained in a fascinating book, among many other details, Eclipse. The history and science of temporary solar eclipses (Guadalmazán, 2026), by the scientist and popularizer Moncho Núñez, who, together with Mayor Francisco Vázquez, owes the creation of the extraordinary group of public science museums that exist in La Coruña.
For these temporary, total, partial or annual disappearances of the Sun (also if it causes an eclipse of the Moon) Antigüedad shouts ecleipsiswhich means “desaparición”, “abandonment”.
We owe the existence of this astronomical phenomenon to one thing a fortuitous circumstance — no reason is known for this — the fact that the diameter of the Moon, the celestial body which interposes itself between the Earth and the Sun and obscures it from our sight, is four times smaller than the Sun, and that the Moon has been sought four times more than the Earth than the Sun.
The excitement of the August 12th total eclipse is normal. In Spain, it was last seen in 1959, and only from the Canary Islands
The reason which now led me to fear a solar eclipse is well known and published: the total solar eclipse that will occur on August 12a phenomenon that seems to attract large numbers of foreign visitors to Spain.
And it is so that by mere considerations of geometry These eclipses are not visible on the entire surface of the earth (I am of course happy that the side of the floor exposed in the corresponding time interval to sunlight).
In 2026, there will be two solar eclipses, one total and one annular, on February 17 and will not be visible in Spain. An annular eclipse occurs when the Moon does not completely cover the Sun to be at its highest point.; if they are also known as “ring of fire eclipses” because a bright light can be seen from the moon.
A total eclipse can be seen in the northern polar regions, parts of Greenland and Iceland and between the areas of the Atlantic Ocean, you will visit the Iberian Peninsulafrom which all the French will enter north and cross part of the communities of Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, Castilla y León, País Vasco, Navarra, Madrid, Castilla-La Mancha, La Rioja, Aragón, Cataluña and Comunidad Valenciana to pass through the Balearic Islands; in the rest of Spain it will be considered partial.
In the Real Astronomical Observatory of Madrid 2026 yearbook, where we look at previous data, the hours corresponding to the beginning and end of the eclipse, the beginning and end of totality are given. It starts in La Coruña at 19 hours and 31 minutes, with a total time of 20 hours, 27 m. y 35 segundos, finishing in 20 h., 28 m. 51 s., finishing on the Spanish circumnavigation of the Balearic Islands shortly before Puesta del Sol (Palma: 19 h., 38 m.; 20 h., 31 m.; r 20 h., 32 sm) 19. s., Valencia 38 m., 32 m., 24 s. and 20 h., 33 m., 24 s.);
The excitement of the August 12 eclipse is understandable. In Spain, the last total eclipse may have occurred in 1959, only from the Canary Islands. No one has been seen on the Iberian Peninsula since 1912.
When I was preparing the biography of José Echegaray, I got to know the playwright more closely, because he was the best Spanish mathematician of the 19th century, also a mathematical physicist, and I found out that he attended, sent to the Escuela de Caminos, of which he was a professor, to the total eclipse of the sun, which he observed from July in the desert of Las Palmas, in the desert of Las Castell. 1860.
In order to study this eclipse, the leader of three astronomical expeditions from the former countries traveled to Spain, including the Observatory of the Roman College, led by its director, the Jesuit Angelo Secchi.
on that occasion The Spanish astronomers acted as helpers to the foreigners in all respectsa situation that must be understood as much by the inexperience of the Hispanics as by the importance of the eclipse and the good visibility that Spain offers. With this in mind, it is important to focus on a very appropriate scientific context, which coincides with the beginning of the application to the study of the eclipse of two new auxiliary techniques of astrophysics: photography and spectroscopy.
And I cannot forget the eclipse that occurred on May 20, 1919, observed by two British expeditions from the African island of Prince and Brazil to the north of Brazil. The results confirmed the curvature of light rays in the presence of a gravitational field (in this case the Sun), one of the three initial predictions of the theory of general relativity, which Einstein completed in late 1915. It was this result that made Einstein a worldwide public celebrity.
Although total solar eclipses do not occur often in Spain, more of these eclipses will occur during the morning of August 2, 2027. The entire French border will cross the western edge of Gibraltar and take in the extreme south of the peninsula and the north of Africa, including cities such as Cádiz, Málaga, Ceuta and Melilla. But for this moment, they are not forgetting this year.
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