Cheers rang out as hundreds of people gathered in a heat-scorched field looked skyward as darkness fell.
PEOPLE react as they observe the total solar eclipse from the sea port of Tarragona, northeastern Spain, on 12 August 2026.
JOSEP LAGO/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
BURGOS, Spain (AFP) — The total eclipse plunged a vast swathe of Spain from broad daylight into darkness Wednesday, drawing awed gasps and applause from spectators gathered in parks and cities across the country.
As impressive as it was fleeting — barely two minutes at most — the extremely rare astronomical event delighted Spaniards and tourists alike across a band of territory stretching from Galicia to the Mediterranean coast and the Balearic Islands.
As the light slowly faded in Tarragona, on the Mediterranean coast, a crowd looked on in almost reverent silence as the orange, late-afternoon glow gave way to almost complete darkness.
“It’s crazy!” uttered a woman as the crowd beside her suddenly burst into enthusiastic applause.
Many had traveled from across Catalonia to witness the spectacle, swept up in the fervor that gripped Spain in recent days with the approach of the eclipse, the first of its kind in the country in over a century.
“Very exciting,” said Laura Alarcon, 53, an accountant from Tarragona.
“I wasn’t expecting that. I thought it wasn’t going to be as good. But the atmosphere, the situation, the way they prepared everything. I loved it!” she said. “And the glasses work, too!”
Nearby, Alejandro Cuesta, a 30-year-old nanoscience researcher who had traveled from Barcelona with his mother, struggled to contain his emotions.
“I almost started crying. A shiver ran through my whole body. It was beautiful,” he said.
About 500 kilometers to the west, the town of Lodoso was likewise swept up in the collective excitement.
Cheers rang out as hundreds of people gathered in a heat-scorched field looked skyward as darkness fell.
But as the Moon completely covered the Sun, the cheers gave way to a spellbound silence as spectators fixed their eyes on the solar corona.
“I got goosebumps. I wasn’t expecting that light,” said Marta Miguel Tobrar, a 48-year-old illustrator visiting with her family from nearby Burgos.
Some had waited all afternoon in sweltering heat beneath the scant shade of umbrellas, while others, the best prepared, had set up
their telescopes.
On site, instructions were posted in several languages — French, Korean, Polish, German, English — to help the crowd get organized.
At the start of the partial eclipse, when the Moon began to cover the Sun at around 17:30 GMT, some people shouted “Wow!” eager to see what would unfold.
A group of South Korean tourists burst into enthusiastic applause.
It was a moving atmosphere, immortalized by the countless phones raised to capture photos and videos of that precise instant.
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