The smell of the eclipse

After a reservation made at a small hotel in Fornalutx 13 months ago, an hour in the car looking for parking, and a walk that I can only describe as a trek through hell, I managed to see the eclipse. This is where I could make a dramatic pause and write that bit about 'expectatives vs. reality'. My experience with the eclipse could be summarized in a series of items, but, above all, in the fact that the eclipse stinks. More than the astronomical phenomenon itself, the people. And if you are heavily pregnant with an overdeveloped sense of smell, the result of walking among hundreds of sweaty people, facing a two-kilometer uphill walk to reach the Picada tower in Sóller is 'interesting', to say the least. There are goats from the Serra that smell less than the people coming and going, elbows dripping and with outfits often pathetically chosen.

Yes, we will dissect people's outfits as if this were the Oscars red carpet, because it's more entertaining than Lady Gaga and Billy Porter combined. Special mention to all the people who showed up empty-handed – considering it was 34 degrees and there were four hours left until the astrological show began –: there were few accidents. In the top three of the out-of-place attendees appears the British Juan Valdez, a hybrid of an elegant tourist who must have mistaken the mountain range for a coffee plantation, and his "outfit of white linen and long sleeves (with a matching hood), which was soaked and brownish 30 seconds after the expedition began. In second place, we should talk about the whole group in general who were climbing with Hawaiian-style flip-flops, the wet dream of every physiotherapist. But I think I'll focus on the great young women who were climbing in long linen dresses, flat sandals, and handbags, more prepared for a cocktail at Sa Fonda in Deià than for climbing rocks. And on the podium comes our wannabe influenceryankee: tight red dress, slit of your skirt Estopa level, matching with red lips and wet effect hairstyle, but without the effect, because the girl was soaked from head to toe. She, wonderful in her total look, up on our viewpoint rock ten minutes before the eclipse and she asks me, with my whole belly and her ovaries, if I can move a little. I tell her we've been there for over three hours and I have no intention of getting any closer to the edge of a place not meant for what we're doing. She takes a small step back and starts asking our German neighbor for photos, who has managed to capture a quite striking image with his iPhone. “Can you send them to me via Airdrop, no rush, okay?”. Of course, pretty. As if a good part of everything and everyone who is hooked on the North American world had personified themselves in that young woman, who, accompanied by her friend turned assistant, did not stop taking selfies.

I could make podiums and lists of many of the things we observed, as if I were John Cusack in the movie High Fidelity. For example, the fact that in five hours we only heard Catalan spoken on three occasions: a gentleman who was broadcasting the ascent to the tower via social networks, a family who were two steps above us, and some young people we met on the descent. The rest were mainly Germans, Americans, and French. Unlike my friend influencer, my outfits were quite discouraging: maternity shorts, a crop top, a basket overflowing with food, and a parasol gifted by an air conditioning brand that I've already seen in more than one Instagram photo. I've seen villages that started with less. In my mind, Caseta dels Capellans was founded by three people watching an eclipse and things must have gotten out of hand.

After seeing summaries on television about other eclipses, I realized that the process of watching it live was much slower and, in fact, I was grateful to have the opportunity to slow down, to pause. I also thought that people would be a bit more respectful or would be silent, but there was even a moment of music on a mobile phone, the Germans next door singing "Total eclipse of the heart, by Bonnie Tyler, every three minutes, the brrrrsssss of the drones that kept recording and the click-click from the cameras. However, at the moment the phenomenon culminated and during the ring of fire, silence fell, and even the cicadas fell silent, enveloped in a more or less sudden darkness. A lack of sound that was only broken by the applause of those who equated the climax with a Ryanair landing and the horn of the obscenely souped-up car below us, which they said belongs to Cristiano Ronaldo. The air didn't cool as much as I imagined, but a shiver ran down my spine. And hearing exclamations of admiration in dozens of languages is also an experience that unites us all a little more. Hopefully, next year they will chase the eclipse elsewhere in the world and we here can see it in peace, without apocalyptic messages, restrictions, and rows of people who think they have the right to ruin a few magical minutes of silence.