The August 12, 2026 total solar eclipse in Viniegra de Abajo (La Rioja)

The two Viniegras made for the most instructive comparison in La Rioja, and Viniegra de Abajo came off worse on every line by a hair. It logged 99 seconds of totality, one fewer than its neighbour upstream; it sits 119 metres lower, at 1,338 above sea level; its clear-sky statistic for 12 August is 38.7% against 40.9%, both drawn from the 1996-2025 series; and its horizon clearance, 2.7 degrees, is less than half the 5.3 recorded up the road. Six kilometres separate the two.

Even so, 77.6 points left it fourth among the 174 Rioja municipalities in the band, ahead of 96% of the province. The total phase ran from 20:28:30 to 20:30:09 and the Sun stayed up for another 46 minutes, until 21:16:37, with the eclipse still unfinished when it set. A local mean high of 24.4 degrees and 42.9% average cloud cover describe a mountain August, not what actually happened on the day.