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.

Comments

Is there any actual benefit to that schedule?

[barc0001]

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.

Re:Is there any actual benefit to that schedule?

[omnichad]

What's insane is that they decided they still need an 8-hour day. Why not 6 hours with a 3-hour break in the middle? I bet it would be more productive (if not at least equal) than 8 hours with a 1-hour break in the middle.

Re:Is there any actual benefit to that schedule?

[XXongo]

I wouldn't mind a long break in the middle of the day, and maybe a nap. Doesn't sound insane to me at all.

Re:Is there any actual benefit to that schedule?

[HornWumpus]

Practice started before the invention of AC. Too hot to work, so take a nap.

Re:Is there any actual benefit to that schedule?

[quintesse]

Ehm, no it's not. You mustn't have been to Spain but I can tell you the hottest time of day is definitely around 2-5pm and in summer you shouldn't be doing any strenuous exercise outside in the sun until let's say 8pm, which is still hours before sundown, when temperatures will have gone done a lot. There are parts of Spain where just walking outside mid-day is an effort and people are most active early in the morning and in the afternoon.

Re:Is there any actual benefit to that schedule?

[skids]

What's insane is the fact that I have to take time off work to do just about everything, because other than restaurants and convenience stores, everyone works the same damn schedule. You'd think if they wanted to restructure things they'd fix that, too, instead of just switching the time of the same damn schedule.

Re:Is there any actual benefit to that schedule?

[thegarbz]

Spain is roughly on the same latitude as the northern half of the US. Spain can get hot no doubt, but to think that the US doesn't or is cooler is pretty naiive or foolish.

As is comparing places by latitude. Climates are a complicated thing. If you want to truly appreciate it then you should check out Gran Canaria (technically Spanish but off the coast of Africa). The island is 40km wide and round. Depending where you are on the island it will either be 20deg and permanently cloudy or 37deg and never see a drop of rain.

Likewise the UK is more northern than Illinois, but it sure as hell doesn't have an average low temperature of -10C during the winter.

You're right of course, but for the wrong reasons.

The Siesta only works if...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Siesta only works if you work close enough that you can go home during it. If you have to commute long distances to get to work, so that you can't realistically go home during the workday, there's literally zero reason why any rational person should want to take a 3-hour lunch, especially when 2 of those 3 hours could be spent at home with family at the end of the day.

Re:The Siesta only works if...

[Major_Disorder]

Once you learn to sleep sitting up with your eyes open, meetings become so much more productive.

Misread summary...

[__aaclcg7560]

For a moment I thought said, "California and Spain," and I thought, "When did Cali-Mexico go back to Spain?!"

Restaurant hours

[dtmos]

One thing that always bewilders US tourists visiting large cities in Spain is that the posted hours at the typical restaurant has it closing at 5 PM, then reopening at 8 PM.

Conversely, one can always tell if a restaurant caters to tourists: If it's open at 6 PM, it's not catering to the locals!

Is our always-on workstyle much different?

[ErichTheRed]

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.

Re:Is our always-on workstyle much different?

[n329619]

Not to disagree with your main focus on flexible work schedule and how companies shouldn't be clock-watcher, but stating that the 3-hours hole could cause sleep cycle issue might actually in the opposite.

Providing the 3-hours lunch and nap benefit Spain workers sleep cycle as humans were not meant to have long blocks of sleep. Have you ever felt in an afternoon that it feels great to take a nap? That's the body responding to the natural pattern.

Humans were meant to have multiple shorter cycle sleeps in the day and night (Biphasic sleep / Interrupted sleep - two periods of nighttime sleep and a nap in the day). It was until industrialization that resulted in wanting people that can work long hour none stop and thus one long hour sleep. We industrialized people sleep one long night, therefore we feel working at 10pm is stressful as we get progressively sleepy and tried. However, their nap made them more energetic thus working at 10pm is not as stressful. Their nap also increases the awake time of the workers therefore actually provide a little more time for work balance.

So it may still be beneficial to Spain workers. However as it is incompatible with other industrialized world, like what you've said, only the working people of Spain can see if it is working and decide on whether or not they want to abandon their practice.

Adjustment needed

[johnw]

Bear in mind that, because Spain uses central European time, their clocks are between 1 and 3 hours ahead of what you'd get if you used a sundial. Most of Spain is west of the Greenwich meridian, and yet they use a clock time based on them being 15 degrees east of it.

Thus, when they start dinner at 10 p.m., it's merely 10 p.m. by their oddly set clocks. They're really starting somewhere between 7 and 9 p.m.

Re:Adjustment needed

[johnw]

What a peculiar idea. Clock time is entirely arbitrary,

It's not clear what you think is a peculiar idea, but to say that clock time is entirely arbitrary is a ludicrous assertion. Clock time is always loosely based on the position of the sun. Spain is unusual in moving quite so far away from where their clocks would have been before the advent of railways required unified times.

All I was pointing out is that the Spanish don't in fact eat as late in the evening as they appear to.

The rest of your post doesn't seem to relate in any way to what I said.

Re:Adjustment needed

[lurker412]

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.

Has the author ever BEEN there?

[petes_PoV]

The article reads like a long list of cliches, harvested from clippings.
So far as I know, the "nap-bars" mentioned were only in the news recently because one has just opened.

My personal experience is that spanish businesses and most shops open at 10 (local time) until 2. Everybody has lunch at 2 - which depending on whether daylight savings is in effect of not is roughly the local noon, or one hour past.

Small shops reopen at 4-ish, if they reopen at all. Supermarkets are open for the whole day.

Businesses can be open until 9 at night. Although that is still generally before the spanish eat their late meal (the main meal is lunch). And the day ends at about midnight local time - except at weekends and fiestas: of which there are many.

As for being unique? I seem to recall Italy working to the same schedule when I worked there briefly in the 90's.

I call B.S.

[rsilvergun]

they'll lose their 3 hour lunch break and still have to work late.

Re:I call B.S.

[mjwx]

This,

Nobody expects the Spanish Indigestion.

Excuse me, I'm Spanish and

[fabriciom]

I'd like to clear somethings. The "3 hour" lunch is 4 hours and this depends where you live in Spain. In the big cities (Madrid, Barcelona, etc) all office jobs only have 1 hour lunch, only the public facing jobs have 4 hours lunch. I'm talking about retail stores and such.

Not true

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm Spanish and the article talks about shop opening hours. Practically NOBODY has more than one hour for lunch. WTF are these guys talking about?

3 hours seems a bit much

[quintesse]

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.

Bollocks ...

[angel'o'sphere]

The article is bollcks as always.
You can take your break as lomg as you want, it is not mandatory or anything.
And if one had lived in Spain (or Italy or Greece) one would know: business is still going on during siesta, and it is damn mandatory to have a siesta if you work ... as it is DAMN HOT!

Catalonia and the rest of Spain

[thegarbz]

it could drive a wedge between Catalonia and the rest of Spain

I think this may be kind of the point. Catalonia has done a lot to try and distance itself from the rest of Spain, by passing local laws in direct contradiction to the opinion of much of Spain, e.g. as states were passing laws to protect bullfighting, Catalonia passed laws to ban it. Plus there's the whole independence referendum thing and the several constitutional challenges that were fought on keeping Catalonia as part of Spain.

Re:liquid lunches and late nights

[aberglas]

I've written code after a lunch like that that took weeks to fix afterwards...