Total eclipse of August 2026 in Spain: The Government asks all autonomous communities for a plan to guarantee safety

The challenge of organizing a mass event unprecedented in Spanish history has led the government to mobilize 13 ministries, creating an inter-ministerial commission that began its work on August 29, less than a year before the first of the three solar eclipses that will pass over Spanish territory between 2026 and 2028. For its second meeting, the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities—which leads the commission along with the Ministry of Transport and Mobility—invited the autonomous communities, with the aim of beginning collaboration on the development of security and mobility plans . All the regional governments have confirmed their participation in the meeting—which began this Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. at the Ministry of Science headquarters—except for the Basque Country, which declined to attend.

Ministerial sources confirm that the Government will ask each regional government at this meeting to create its own interdepartmental committees and to develop its plans for the unprecedented trio of eclipses. The Minister of Science, Diana Morant, recently called for close coordination between public administrations and stated that “our objective is to guarantee safety, mobility, public outreach, and environmental protection during these events, which have great scientific, social, and educational relevance.” The first of these will take place on August 12, 2026, when Spain will be the only country in the world where the totality phase of a solar eclipse can be reliably observed. This eclipse will also cross an unpopulated area of ​​Greenland, the western tip of Iceland, and will also graze a corner of northern Portugal.

This unique event will attract millions of additional visitors to Spain, right in the middle of the peak tourist season. The Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Universities, Juan Cruz Cigudosa—who chairs the interministerial commission— has warned that the country faces an unprecedented organizational challenge, requiring coordination across all levels of government to manage the massive influx of people seeking to observe the astronomical phenomenon along the entire path of totality of the eclipse. Therefore, in this first meeting with the regional governments, the Secretary of State is proposing three tools to achieve this “key” coordination: establishing a focal point in each autonomous community to coordinate the corresponding actions; creating their own interdepartmental commissions, with participation from the central government; and each community selecting its own regional experts to join the working groups already established by the central government.

Determining how many millions of extra tourists will arrive in Spain and how much internal travel the astronomical event will cause is one of the first tasks of the interministerial commission. The government estimates that the next two total solar eclipses in Spain—on August 12, 2026, and August 2, 2027—will cause at least “hundreds of thousands” of people to travel within the areas along the path of totality within a few hours. And the unpredictable nature of weather forecasting makes it impossible to know far in advance where all these people will want to gather.

This time, in addition to the fact that in 2026 we will experience the first total solar eclipse in over a century on the Iberian Peninsula, there is the astronomical coincidence that this eclipse will not be alone. It will be followed by another total eclipse—in August 2027—and an annular eclipse—in January 2028—forming a trio of major eclipses in three consecutive years, something unprecedented in modern history. The first two eclipses represent one of the few opportunities in Europe, throughout the 21st century, to see the sun set in broad daylight. For many Europeans alive today, they will be the only opportunities to see something like this on their own continent; and moreover, in Spain and in the middle of summer. Expectations will be sky-high, agree all the experts consulted.

The massive crowds that these solar eclipses always attract pose a challenge for the Directorates General of Traffic and Civil Protection, both under the Ministry of the Interior. In statements to this newspaper, Joaquín Álvaro, president of the Federation of Astronomical Associations of Spain , was among the first to warn that “if there is no planning, it will be a disaster. There will be huge traffic jams and the risk of forest fires will skyrocket. This is a constant with total eclipses.”

Managing large and unusual gatherings of people—which tend to occur in rural areas and natural spaces—and with the high temperatures of August, will increase not only the risk of wildfires—which this year ravaged tens of thousands of hectares in the first half of August in two of the regions with the best conditions, in theory, for viewing the 2026 total eclipse: Galicia and Castile and León—but also the risk of heatstroke and dehydration. Other experts point out that in recent total eclipses, countries like the US have experienced “in addition to road gridlock, fuel shortages and disruptions to telecommunications networks.”

At sunset on August 12, the Moon will completely obscure the Sun's disk, darkening the sky in a band diagonally across northern Spain, passing through at least part of 27 of the 50 provinces and 13 of the 17 autonomous communities. One of these autonomous communities included in the path of totality is the Basque Country—the sun will be completely obscured throughout Álava and parts of Biscay and Gipuzkoa—which makes its absence from this first meeting between ministries and autonomous communities all the more striking.

In addition to the Ministry of Science, which heads it, the interministerial commission for the trio of eclipses in Spain—2026, 2027, and 2028— is comprised of the Ministries of Transport and Sustainable Mobility; Defense; Finance; the Interior; Education, Vocational Training and Sport; Industry and Tourism; Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory; Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge; Culture; Economy, Trade and Business; Health and Social Rights; and Consumer Affairs and Agenda 2030. A total of 13 of the 22 ministries currently forming the Government will participate in this commission, similar to the one convened for the organization of the 2030 FIFA World Cup, with a commission created on February 18th to coordinate the actions of 15 ministries. Furthermore, the National Astronomical Observatory, the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics, and the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia are also participating in the eclipse commission.

The invitation, extended now, for the autonomous communities to also participate is a government initiative aimed at optimizing the use of public resources and avoiding duplication of efforts. This is also essential in most cases, sources at the Ministry of Science point out, "since many of the relevant powers have been transferred to the autonomous communities, such as healthcare, fire prevention and management, ownership of secondary roads, and, in some cases, regional police forces."