Eclipse Chasing in León, Spain
I am an eclipse chaser. What I mean by this is I saw one total eclipse back in 2017, it was phenomenal, and now I’m hooked. I will go out of my way to see one if at all possible. And what do you know, there was a total solar eclipse in 2026 in León, Spain, visible just a couple of hours away from my new hometown. This occurred a week after my birthday in August, so my oldest friend K and my sister L made plans to visit me for both. Eclipse chasing, commence!
We had a bit of drama in the months leading up to their visit. L booked an AirBnB in Galicia a year in advance, and although we talked about booking a backup hotel we never got around to it. See, I’ve had AirBnB cancel a booking on me before, at really short notice. They are not hotels and should not be treated as such, so I should have booked a backup. About four months before the eclipse the AirBnB in Galicia suddenly cancelled, claiming property issues. Yeah, right. I have yet to find out if they rebooked at a quadruple rate, which is TOTALLY not allowed but happens all the time anyway.
I somehow managed to use my hotel-fu to secure us a studio apartment hotel in León. The price was astronomical but I expected that. Everybody agreed to split the cost, so that was one problem solved. I bought an air mattress to take with us, and that was the other problem solved, now there were enough beds. So on the morning of the day of the eclipse, August 12th, we headed to Spain. The drive was about 3.5 hours, through the northeast corner of Portugal and then onto the Spanish meseta, the terrain gradually changing from wooded hills to plains. The meseta looked semi-arid, hot, and dry, and also really level and a good place to watch an eclipse that was happening low in the sky. This became important later.
Heading to León
Now that the EU exists, crossing into Spain is … easier than it once was:
The hotel in Leon (Altar Suites Caño Badillo by gaiarooms) was quite good, a spacious studio with great self-checkin access, located in the center of town, and with plenty of floor space for our extra mattress. And A/C, which is important in August. I was curious and checked the regular season price, and I was not wrong about them quadrupling it for the eclipse. This was the ultimate in surge pricing. *sigh* But I would stay here again.
We arrived with a few hours to go. Our plan, based on Internet research, was to walk over to the river which had long promenades and supposedly a good view of the western sky. L wanted to verify this, and we’re glad she did. She reported back that there were buildings and high trees, and it was difficult to see the western horizon. This was concerning because the eclipse was low in the sky.
And so we pivoted. On the way into town, I’d been noticing how flat the meseta was, and mentally bookmarked a couple of roadside pullouts that looked good. We piled into the car and headed back along the highway to one of these spots. Quite a few cars proved we weren’t the only ones with this idea.
Scenes From the Field
We found a great farmer’s field and pulled off to the side of the road, then settled down with about 15 minutes to go before the show started. When we packed for this trip, we weren’t sure how busy León was going to be with eclipse chasers, so instead of depending on restaurants we brought a cooler of pre-cooked food. Turns out we needn’t have worried, but now we had a picnic.
We ate, and began looking at the sun (with proper glasses, of course). And what a show it was. I find it hard to describe an eclipse if you’ve never seen one. Even really good pictures don’t do it justice, because there’s an element of motion and transition involved in the experience. And my pictures here are NOT good, they are merely proof that we were there. First, there’s the gradually disappearing sun, but it’s subtle. When you look through the protection glasses you see a bite taken out of the orb, like it’s being attacked by Pac Man. Then when you look around, the landscape is slowly getting darker. The colours are all yellow and orange, so it’s like sunset.
And then the moment totality hits it’s completely different. The first thing you notice is that the colours shift abruptly to the dark blue of the night sky. The moon, at the center of the eclipse is black. The light halo around it is white. This time we could see corona rays looping out and back, which is something I didn’t see during my first eclipse (woot!). Something about the corona looked like jewelry ornamentation to me, so my immediate response was “Oh, it’s like a huge diamond ring in the sky.” It was mesmerizing. My sister had never seen one before and she was absolutely thunderstruck by it.
Again, these images are the wrong color, the sky was much more blue/black during totality. My phone camera isn’t capable of capturing it properly. Sorry!
When you look around during totality there is light at the horizon, as if sunset is just wrapping up. But it’s 360 DEGREES OF SUNSET. It is all around you instead of just in the west and that feels weird. Animals and insects go quiet because they think night has fallen. When the light returned, a very confused preying mantis found refuge on Marty’s hat, and it took a lot of effort to persuade him to leave.
Kicking Around León
The next day we spent some time wandering León’s center before the drive home. It’s a beautiful place, and I want to come back for a longer visit.
So many places in both Spain and Portugal have wonderful street art. Here’s a great mural L captured during her explorations.
Near our hotel we found this public tap, built into an older public fountain. Given the brickwork, we can probably assume Roman origin:
And finally, here’s your completely random moment. As a user experience professional I’ve always been fascinated by usability hacks, especially in the physical world. This leads to me spending an inordinate amount of attention appreciating door handles and light switches, what we in the business call “affordances.” On the trip home we stopped at a cafe and gas station and of course everyone used the restroom. For a short interval I couldn’t figure out how to lock the door (usability fail!). But it’s kind of ingenious, the whitish lever on the right slides up and down, and when it’s up you can’t turn the door handle so the door stays shut. I’m guessing this allowed the owner to just add this device to the door, instead of replacing the entire handle with a lock, or doing something unfortunate to the beautiful stone of the door frame. Ingenious, really. But needs a diagram.
And that was it for the great Spanish eclipse, 2026. There will be more eclipse chasing in my future … I am probably skipping the one in northern Africa 2027, but I have my eye on Australia/New Zealand 2028.
