Where Did the Total Solar Eclipse of 12 August 2026 Fall, and What Did It Mean for Travel? Path and Duration of Totality, Municipal Circumstances in Spain, Hotel Demand, and Total Eclipses to 2045 from NASA, IGN and INE Data

A total solar eclipse is seen only from inside a narrow path of totality, and the circumstances that matter for a trip (where the path runs, how long totality lasts and how high the Sun stands) vary sharply along a single path. We describe the total solar eclipse of 12 August 2026 from NASA path tables, the Spanish Instituto Geográfico Nacional (IGN) municipal circumstances for all 8,131 Spanish municipalities and the University of Iceland almanac, and set them against Spanish hotel occupancy data (INE) and the NASA eclipse catalogue. Totality lasted up to 2 min 18 s west of Iceland, where the path was 294 km wide at greatest eclipse; over Spain the Sun stood 10° to 2° above the horizon and the central duration fell to 95.8 s. Totality reached 3,963 Spanish municipalities (48.7%), with a maximum of 110 s in three municipalities of Asturias, while Madrid and Barcelona reached 99% coverage without totality. Spanish hotels recorded 14,227,157 travellers in August 2026 (provisional), the highest August since 1999 and 2.9% more than in 2025. In the 23 provinces where at least half the municipalities had totality, travellers rose 3.6% and those resident abroad 8.2%, against 1.8% and 2.7% in the 21 provinces without totality, while overnight stays rose only 0.6%; monthly data cannot attribute these differences to the eclipse. The eclipse of 2 August 2027 will last up to 6 min 23 s, 2.77 times as long, with 288 s in Ceuta, and 19 total solar eclipses occur from 2017 to 2045. All inputs are public.