Event
The Sigüenza aerodrome sits on the high Guadalajara meseta, above 1,100 meters, with an open horizon in most directions and little light pollution. The Starlight Foundation lists it as a dark sky location. For most of the year it is a small airfield with a handful of hangars and a single runway. On one evening in August it becomes the staging ground for something that does not come around often.
On 12 August 2026 a total solar eclipse crosses northern Spain, the first the country has seen since 1905. At Sigüenza the organizers put the start of the partial phase at 19:35, maximum eclipse at 20:32 with totality lasting roughly a minute and a half, and the end at 21:25. The Perseid meteor shower follows from 22:00. A total eclipse low on the horizon near sunset, with a meteor shower behind it, is a specific set of conditions that will not repeat here for generations.
Autopia runs the event, and the format is closer to one of its forest gatherings than to a conventional viewing. Cars park on the runway and along the apron, classics and modern machinery side by side, and the day fills out with the things Autopia usually brings: food, workshops with the Starlight Foundation, an astro DJ, a jazz set after dark, and thematic displays in the hangars covering local aviation history. The car is the reason to gather rather than the thing to look at, which is an honest enough premise for an evening when everyone will be looking up anyway.
From Madrid it is the A2 northeast for around 100 kilometers, then the exit at Alcolea del Pinar and the road north into the hills to Sigüenza, a little over an hour and a half in total. The slower line climbs through the Alcarria by way of Brihuega and the quiet backcountry roads of Guadalajara. Either way the final approach runs through open high country with nothing much on the horizon, which on this particular evening is the entire point.
Organizer
