The general public tends to think that the greatest mysteries hidden in the sky involve the strangest phenomena, such as black holes or those located at—in the truest sense of the word—astronomical distances. Compared to these, the celestial bodies closest to us, which accompany us every day, barely pique our interest; we take them for granted up there, so familiar that they don’t even deserve more than the occasional glance. Perhaps that is why a total solar eclipse like the ones we will experience on August 12 and next year is so special—because it makes us look at our two most

Total solar eclipses do not occur very often in the same location within a single human lifetime, but they do tend to cluster together, so that more than one can occur within a few years. This is what will happen in Spain this year, next year, and in 2028, when there will be two total eclipses and one annular eclipse. A sequence similar to that which occurred in 1900, 1905, and 1912, when three total solar eclipses were concentrated—although in the case of the last one, totality lasted only a few seconds and was visible in a very narrow strip of land that ran through Galicia and part of León