By South China Morning Post | Created at 2026-08-12 21:30:42 | Updated at 2026-08-12 22:55:00
2 hours ago
Day briefly turned to night in Spain on Wednesday, as the country witnessed its first total solar eclipse in more than a century, plunging it into eerie darkness in one of nature’s greatest spectacles.
The spectral glow of the sun’s outer corona, shimmering out of the edges of the shadowy moon, drew gasps and cheers from huge crowds, just 90 minutes after it first appeared in the remote Arctic region of northern Russia.
“It’s a sight I never would have imagined seeing,” said Isabel Troyano, a 56-year-old homemaker, watching with her son in Tarragona, on Spain’s Mediterranean coast. “I got goosebumps.”
Alejandro Cuesta, a 30-year-old nanoscience researcher, called it “incredible … I almost burst into tears. I got chills all over my body.
“It was magnificent … the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in my entire life.”
The eclipse – a first in mainland Europe since 2006 – cast its shadow through parts of Greenland, racing south to smother Keflavik, some 50km (30 miles) from Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik, before arcing across the Atlantic Ocean towards northern Spain.
