Municipalities in Illes Balears within the path of totality

Observation guide

In the Balearics the eclipse played out right at the edge of the horizon. At maximum the Sun stood just 2 to 3 degrees high, the lowest of any province along the path, with the darkened disc effectively skimming the sea. Sixty-seven municipalities fell inside the band, Palma among them, and the longest totality belonged to Algaida at 96 seconds, one minute and 36 seconds of darkness. The result was a paradox: one of the longer eclipses on offer and, at the same time, the most demanding in terms of sightlines.

Estellencs (84.4), Llucmajor (84.0), Banyalbufar (83.7), ses Salines (83.7) and Sant Joan (83.6) topped the observation index. Since all of them sat at 95 or 96 seconds, the ranking came down to the sky: historically clear conditions between 63 % and 65 %. The islands as a whole record strong numbers, from 55.5 % to 69 % with a 62.7 % average, the best pairing of duration and climate statistics in this group. Estellencs and Banyalbufar brought something the figures do not capture, since the northwest coast faces open water.

With the Sun that low, every obstacle counted double. Two or three degrees is roughly a finger's width at arm's length, so a cliff, a stand of pines or a house a few hundred metres away was enough to swallow the whole event inland, while an open sea horizon to the west-northwest settled the matter in the observer's favour. That 62.7 % average comes from thirty years of records between 1996 and 2025; it describes the islands' usual August, not the sky of that particular evening. The next total eclipse over Spain, on 2 August 2027, is confined to Andalusia, Ceuta and Melilla, and the islands lie well outside it.