STORY: :: San Agustin del Pozo, Spain
Retired shepherd, Joaquin Tapioles, has opened the doors to the skies from a tiny Spanish farming village.
“”My dream would be to watch the eclipse with people and help them experience it.”
He is preparing to watch the first-in-a-century total solar eclipse from an observatory he built.
“But I know myself, and if people come to the observatory, I’ll be more focused on making sure they see it than on watching it myself, and I’ll end up missing it. I don’t want to miss it that day, so I’ll be watching it with my family from the observatory.”
Skywatchers are getting ready across Spain for August 12, when they hope to catch a glimpse of the first total eclipse visible since 1912.
Like many amateur astronomers, Tapioles has helped collect observations and proudly displays a NASA sticker.
He’s started calling himself the ‘Galactic Shepherd’.
“On the journey we used to make from the village to where the sheep were, it would take us about an hour to walk there. One time, we saw a meteor shower, and that’s my first memory of being fascinated by what I was seeing. My father used to say they were stars falling from the sky.”
He has a busy few years ahead:
Spain is set to experience another total solar eclipse on August 2 next year – the longest one in Europe in the 21st century – and an annular eclipse in January 2028, completing the so-called “Iberian Eclipse Trio”.
