The August 12, 2026 total solar eclipse in Cuenca (Cuenca)

The provincial capital sat high and still saw little. Cuenca stands at 1,376 metres, eleventh in altitude among the 121 municipalities of the province inside the band, above almost every mountain village that beat it in the ranking; yet its totality came to 56 seconds, from 20:31:59 to 20:32:55, only 87th in duration. Thirty-five seconds less than Beteta, some forty kilometres to the north. Altitude, in a sunset eclipse, does not buy seconds: seconds are handed out by distance to the centre line.

What altitude does buy is horizon, and even that was only half true here. The horizon model allowed it 4.5 degrees of clearance, the narrowest of the six Cuenca entries on this list, consistent with a city built over river gorges. Its sky record, 55.9% of cloudless 12 Augusts across the three decades from 1996 to 2025, sits above the provincial median. It was the earliest of these six to lose the Sun, at 21:09:28, with the eclipse still unfinished.