Eclipses in Alcossebre: 2026, and the two still to come

The path of totality crosses Andalusia —Cádiz, Málaga, Almería— and North Africa, so from the Valencia region it will be partial, not total. But a deep partial: on IGN figures, about 88 % of the Sun covered in the province of Castellón, 90 % in Valencia and nearly 95 % in Alicante.

A bite that size shows without you even looking up: the light turns metallic and the temperature drops. What does not change is the safety rule — with no totality, the certified glasses never come off.

Timings for each town are published on the IGN eclipse portal.

This is the one for this stretch of coast. The path of annularity crosses the Peninsula from southwest to northeast and reaches the Valencia region: from here you will see the ring of fire, the Sun as a ring of light around the Moon, which is then too far away to cover it completely.

Falling in January brings two real advantages: far fewer people than in mid-August, and a winter light that, with the sea alongside, looks like nothing else. And one drawback: January skies are fickle, so have a plan B for where to stand.

Important: an annular eclipse never has a totality phase. However thin the ring looks, it is still direct sunlight: certified ISO 12312-2 glasses stay on the whole time, ring included.

The path of totality —about 290 km wide— crossed Spain from northwest to southeast, and Alcossebre (Alcalà de Xivert) fell very close to the centre line. That made totality last longer here than at most points in the country: around a minute and a half of sudden night. Which is why Castellón, and this coast in particular, was one of the most sought-after places to watch it.

It was a sunset eclipse: the partial phase began more than an hour earlier and totality arrived around 20:31–20:33 (mainland Spain time), with the Sun very low over the western horizon, just a few degrees up. That was both its charm and its difficulty. Official figures at the IGN.

During the partial phases never look at the Sun without protection: use certified eclipse glasses (ISO 12312-2) —ordinary sunglasses are not enough, however dark—. Phones, binoculars and cameras need their own solar filter over the lens.

The only exception is totality in a total eclipse, with the Sun fully covered: then you can look with the naked eye. In the two ahead, that never happens: 2027 is partial from here and 2028 is annular. Glasses on from start to finish.

The recipe is the same as in 2026: a spot with a clear horizon, no mountains or buildings hiding a low Sun. In Alcossebre the sea lies to the east, so for a setting Sun the shoreline is not ideal; slightly elevated, open ground facing inland works better, along with the local viewpoints and the Serra d’Irta, which throws in the panorama.

Check your town’s timing at the IGN before choosing a spot —depending on how high the Sun sits you may want to face east or west— and get there early: in 2026 the coast filled up.

To find your bearings: the Serra d’Irta trails guide and the beaches and coves.

Between eclipses, Alcossebre is the same destination that packed its shoreline that 12 August: Blue Flag beaches, coves in the Sierra de Irta and good food all year. The local events calendar, beaches and nature are the place to start planning.

And this is not the first eclipse to mark the town’s calendar: the one of 1905, the so-called “Spanish eclipse”, was the last total one over the Peninsula before 2026, and the council devotes a guided route to it, “121 years since the year of the eclipse”. That and other traces are in the history of Alcossebre.

Total eclipses have served for centuries as unrepeatable natural laboratories. During the 1868 eclipse, astronomers Janssen and Lockyer spotted an unknown line in the spectrum of the solar corona: they had just discovered helium, the second most abundant element in the universe, found on the Sun 27 years before it was found on Earth (hence its name, after Helios). In 1919, Eddington's expeditions to Príncipe and Sobral measured during totality how the Sun's gravity bent starlight: the first experimental confirmation of Einstein's general relativity, which made him a world celebrity overnight. Much earlier, Thales of Miletus is credited with predicting the 585 BC eclipse that stopped a battle between Lydians and Medes. Historical eclipse records (Babylonian, Chinese, Arabic) are still used today to measure how Earth's rotation slows down over the millennia.

Totality remains the only natural window to observe the Sun's inner corona from the ground — the region where solar storms are born. Data gathered in those minutes improve space weather models, which protect satellites, GPS, aviation and power grids from solar eruptions. During an eclipse the ionosphere changes abruptly, allowing scientists to study how that affects radio communications and GPS accuracy. There is also a very down-to-earth effect: with so much solar photovoltaic power installed, the sudden drop and recovery of output during the eclipse is a real-life stress test for the power grid, which operators (in Spain, Red Eléctrica) plan to the minute. And it is a chance for citizen science: thousands of people record the temperature drop, animal behaviour or photograph the corona, contributing real data to researchers.