Most welcome of course, goes straight over my field and almost straight over my home. Now the only thing we need to do is some geo-engineering to manipulate the rotation of our planet a bit, so the eclipse is a little earlier in the day, as it will be relatively shortly before SS on Mallorca. Hey, we have 2 years to do that. And nature lends a hand, AIUI, polar ice melting and going to the equator slows us down..
Mallorca most likely cloudness, NW Spain anyone’s guess. Nice trade-off to make.
Good idea ! I still remember the 1999 eclipse in Normandy.
The Asturian coast may not be the best area to observe, and I would rather watch well before SS
I would more consider :
Burgos LEBG or Teruel for those who want an IFR airport (no need in August)
Garray LEGY AIP entry near Soria
Los Oteros LEOS AIP entry near Leon
Funny how the path of totality follows the emptiest area of Spain :
The 2026 eclipse will start 19:30 at Spain’s west coast (La Coruña – Oviedo – Bilbao) or 19:38 on Mallorca (@aart’s backyard). Total eclipse will start around 20:30 and will last about 2 minutes.
From my friend the eclipse nerd.
We probably all know the adage of “lies, damned lies and then statistics” but statistics is the best we have, so here goes the best guess there is as to the best location..
I’ll stay at home, likely high on the NW coast in the home of a friend. Others may elect the Zaragoza area.
I’ll revive the thread in time!
Aart, Thanks very much for sharing that article. It saves a lot of work!
The author has done everything apart from reach a conclusion and select “the best spot”! But having read it, it’s clear why they didn’t! There isn’t a “best spot”.
My gut instinct when I first thought of the idea, would have been to the coast lines for an unobstructed view. But their analysis clearly shows that that is not a good choice with much more cloud coverage there.
Also, it’s interesting that the elevation of the sun will be so low. Just 10 degrees over the horizon on the north west and just 4 degrees on the islands.
The conclusion that I come to having read the article, is that somewhere like Zaragosa or the Balearic Islands are the best choices. They both have one of the lowest amounts of cloud cover.
Zaragosa will have the advantage of a slightly higher sun elevation, but it will still be quite low. However some investigation would be needed to find a location where the view isn’t obstructed. This might not be so easy given that a visitor will need to do a bit of a rece to find where the best position and establish where the sun will be at that time of the day. Not so easy when you don’t really know the areas and probably only have a day or two to start looking.
The Balearic Islands have the advantage that if you make it to the west coast, your view won’t be obstructed by anything, but the disadvantage of it being very low (just 4 degrees). So effectively a sunset. So it will probably be quite effected by atmospheric shimmer (I’m sure there’s a technical term for that!) being so low, and any cloud at all for 50nm would probably interfere with the view. (In fairness, any cloud for some distances would also interfere with the view in Zaragosa too as the sun there isn’t much higher at all, though there would likely be less shimmer).
I think we should charge you and @Antonio to take a photo of the sun at 20:31 on 12 August 2024, so we can see what the view will look like 
Prior to reading the article I was tending towards the idea of central Spain (Zaragosa or Madrid) but having read it, I’m starting to think that the Belearic’s might be a better choice (and a little sea breeze might be welcome!). I’ve also quickly come to the conclusion that a hire car will be needed as we’ll probably need to travel a bit to find a location where the setting sun will be visible.
Thanks again for sharing it!
