This past August 12, 2026, I witnessed the first total solar eclipse I have ever seen in my life (as far as I can remember), and it is definitely not a moment I’m going to forget anytime soon.

At first, we weren’t even planning on going to see it. If we could see it from Madrid, great, but if not, well, no big deal. But a few days beforehand, some friends told us they were going to a small village somewhere between Palencia and Burgos to watch it, and asked if we wanted to go with them. And we’re so glad we said yes.

Spain was going to be the most privileged country for this eclipse, with totality visible across a large part of the north of the Iberian Peninsula! And we would be right in the middle of it. On top of that, it turned out that NASA ended up choosing a village about 40km from where we were as its base for photographing, recording and broadcasting the eclipse. Couldn’t have been better, right?

And it was incredible. The four of us were standing in the middle of the fields, on a hill we had found, completely alone, with nobody else around. Suffering through the heat a little, but enjoying watching the moon begin to appear along one edge of the sun shortly before sunset. Feeling the temperature slowly drop as the moon covered more and more of the star, watching the colour of the sky and the landscape gradually change, everything slowly getting darker, until the climactic moment of totality.

A feeling that is difficult to describe. You have your eclipse glasses on, everything is completely black except for the disk of the sun, which is slowly disappearing, and then, suddenly, there is only a ring. You take off your glasses and it feels like you’ve been transported to another world. Seeing that ring in the sky, with a black hole in the middle, is incredible.

And after a minute and a half, it’s over. The sun begins to peek out again, you put your glasses back on, and enjoy the rest of it. What made it particularly interesting was that, because it happened so close to sunset, when the sun disappeared behind the distant mountains, it was still partially covered.

An incredible experience that I hope to repeat someday!