An estimated 15.2 million residents lie inside the path of the 12 August total solar eclipse. Nearly all of them are in Spain, at the end of the track, where the eclipsed Sun sits low over the horizon and no place gets two full minutes.
The Moon's dark inner shadow begins at sunrise over Arctic Russia, arcs over the pole, and comes down on north-east Greenland and the west coast of Iceland before crossing the Atlantic to its last landfall on the northern half of Spain and the Balearic Islands.1 The European Space Agency also places the north-eastern corner of Portugal inside the path.5
Almost all of that track is water or ice. Combining Columbia University's gridded population data with its own eclipse geometry, timeanddate estimates that about 15.2 million people live inside the path, against roughly 980 million who will see at least a partial eclipse.2 The land that gets the longest view is the part with fewest people on it: the greatest duration, 2 minutes 18 seconds, falls on open Atlantic near Iceland at 19:46 Spanish time, and the longest totality on land is on the cliffs of Iceland's Westfjords.14
Spain sits at the far end of the track, so totality arrives close to sunset and the Sun is very low. The IGN gives the eclipsed Sun at 12 degrees above the horizon at A Coruña, 8 degrees at Burgos and 2 degrees at Palma de Mallorca — low enough that a ridge line, a tree or a building can end the view. Madrid and Barcelona sit just outside the band; Madrid's maximum comes at 7.2 degrees and is partial only.1
The shadow also moves fast. Across the seven Spanish places for which the IGN publishes second-level timings below, totality starts at Vitoria-Gasteiz and finishes at Formentera 6 minutes 11 seconds later. The whole national event, from the first place going dark to the last place coming back, lasts about as long as the walk to a corner shop.
A solar eclipse can only happen at new moon, so the night of 12–13 August will be free of moonlight — the best condition a meteor shower can have. The International Meteor Organization puts the Perseid maximum on 13 August and expects rates on eclipse night to build to about 40 an hour by 3am local time, which it calls considerably lower than many published predictions
. Recent Perseid returns have run below average, with stronger activity expected from 2027.3
The 15.2 million is an estimate, not a count. It comes from a gridded population surface built on data from 2000 to 2020, counts residents rather than people who will be standing in the path on the day, and traces to a single publisher combining that surface with its own path geometry.2 We found no independent recomputation to check it against, and no country-by-country split of it from any primary or institutional source. Our statement that Spain holds the overwhelming majority rests on that published characterisation, not on a calculation of our own.
Whether Portugal is in the path is unsettled in our sources: the European Space Agency includes its north-eastern corner; the IGN's description of the track does not mention it. The IGN's prose gives Burgos 104 seconds while its own table gives 103, and we print the table figure. Exhibit 02 covers only the places for which we hold second-level IGN timings, so the path's entry over Galicia and Asturias is not charted. Cloud cover cannot be forecast at this range, and it, rather than duration, usually decides whether anyone sees anything.