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Say Goodbye To Spain's Glorious Three-Hour Lunch Break (citylab.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Is the typical Spanish daily schedule about to change forever? For decades, campaigners in the country have complained that the average Spaniard's habit of keeping extremely late hours and taking delightfully long lunch breaks was making everyday life harder for citizens. This week, change could finally be on the way, as 110 professional bodies in Catalonia have signed up to a plan to change the region's daily timetable by 2025, shortening the classic three-hour lunch break so that employees can finish work earlier in the evening. Such a change would radically reshape ordinary people's lives -- and controversially, it could drive a wedge between Catalonia and the rest of Spain, where the national government supports similar changes (and has adopted a shorter break for public offices) but hasn't yet fixed a timetable for action. You could call the plan an end to national harmony, a blessed release for hard-pressed workers, or an attack on the Spanish way of life. Whatever you do, however, don't call it the end of the siesta. That's because the beloved and much-misunderstood Spanish tradition of the afternoon nap more or less died out decades ago. What remained is a highly distinctive national timetable not found in any other European country, where it has often been read as a peculiarly exotic form of madness. The average Spanish working day is certainly unusual in shape. After starting work between 8 and 9 a.m., hungry workers hold out for a lunch break scheduled as late as 1:30 or 2:30. As if in compensation for this long wait, many then stay off-duty for a break of up to three hours, filling it with a protracted multi-course lunch and maybe a stop at a "nap bar." Most stores and many businesses close down until the late afternoon, before a final burst of office hours between 5:30 and 8 (or sometimes 4 to 7). Spaniards then head home at an hour when most people in other countries are cleaning up their dinner dishes, rarely getting food on the table any earlier than 10 p.m. This pushes bedtime past midnight for many.
Because on the surface it sounds completely insane. Stretching out the work day like that so you're not off until well past nightfall most of the year doesn't sound at all appealing.
This 3-hour break was certainly a good idea pre-air conditioning. I've been to a few Middle Eastern countries that have similar practices - either they start work late, work late then eat dinner at 9 or 10:00 at night, or they'll have a similar long break during the middle of the day.
Whatever the work arrangements, I'm guessing people who have flexible schedules have a similar issue - they're not able to stop work during the evening and not able to properly wind down. I'm very lucky that I'm not chained to the desk for fixed hours; these days I'm in systems engineering and out of the IT operations craziness except when something needs serious fixing. This is great because I'm a dad - my wife and I share the various kid appointments and appearances, but I have the more flexible job so I try to help out. This isn't so great when I miss 2 or 3 hours in the middle of the day, then have to come home and do the dad thing, and _then_ have to finish up after everyone's asleep. (It's not because someone's cracking the whip over me, but because the work piles up otherwise; much of my job involves reading, writing and trying new things out lately and I have a massive backlog of reading that never gets shorter.)
I think the key to getting a flexible work schedule right is to not let it turn into an always-on situation, while simultaneously not being a clock-watcher. Like anything, balance is always good. I know people who work for companies with totally out-of-whack work life balance, and they can't go 10 seconds without checking their phone, email and messaging apps because someone is always trying to get a hold of them. Yes, someone always has to be on-call when you're in operations, but it can't be everybody 24 hours a day. That's a way to burn people out quick. People need contiguous, long blocks of sleep to be healthy. If Spanish people aren't able to do that because they have a 3-hour hole in the middle of their day, I can't see any reason not to change.
Spain moved to Central European time to facilitate coordination with Germany during WWII. I believe it was in 1940. It is an hour later than what it was previously. When I say that clock time is arbitrary, I mean just that. There is nothing natural about sunrise being at 6:00, 7:00 or 8:00--it's just what we have agreed on. We could just have easily agreed that sunrise would be at 15:00, and if we had, that would seem "natural."
You are correct that the rest of the post had nothing to do with yours, but rather was connected with the original post. I live in Spain (and since I'm retired, I do take siestas), and I find it annoying that two separate issues--Spain's geographically inappropriate timezone, and Spain's inconvenient commercial hours--tend to be conflated. It's the siesta schedule that truly affects people, not the odd timezone.
I (foreigner living 10+ years in Madrid) don't know many people here that take 3 hour lunches. One, one and a half hours seems much more common. The times we have a lunch that takes more than 2 hours people normally start looking nervously at their watches.
And they definitely don't get to lunch as hungry as you might think, because normally at 11:30 or so people tend to have an "almuerzo", like a light brunch, which is _additional_ to the lunch you eat. So light breakfast, "almuerzo", lunch (which is the biggest meal of the day), then "merienda" for the kids in the late afternoon and (not a big) dinner at 10pm.