The Spanish day is famously long. Lunch doesn’t start until two in the afternoon. Work often ends after seven in the evening and dinner begins at half past eight, at the earliest. To the delight of some tourists keen to experience a different way of living, many restaurants close well after midnight, sending staff home in the early hours of the morning.

So, when Yolanda Diaz, Spain’s second vice president and minister for labor and social economy, denounced the country’s late-night culture as “crazy,” she hit a nerve.

“No reasonable country keeps its restaurants open until one in the morning,” she said during a parliamentary group meeting this month. “It is crazy to keep pretending and extending the hours until we no longer know what time it is.”

“But we are different,” Madrid’s mayor, Isabel Ayuso, shot back on the social media platform X, drawing the debate along political party lines. “They want us all to be puritans, socialists,” she wrote, “Bored and at home.”

Despite the long day, Spaniards work only slightly more than the European average, 37.8 hours a week according to the European Commission. They do, however, get less sleep than most of their Northern European counterparts, 7.13 hours a night according to Public Health Maps.

Spaniards didn’t always stay up so late, says Marta Junqué of the Time Use Institute based in Barcelona, recently consulted by the Spanish government to adjust its laws on working hours.

“Spain is now unique in terms of the late hour that we leave work,” Junqué says. “It hasn’t always been the case. My grandparents worked the same as everyone else. They got up when the sun came out and stopped working when the light had gone. Now, it gets dark at six or seven and we are still working.”

Junqué says the shift in time can be traced to one man: Francisco Franco, Spain’s military dictator who ruled from 1936 to 1975. During World War II, Franco changed Spain’s time zone to align with its German ally. Everything shifted forward by an hour and it hasn’t changed since.

“We should be on the same schedule as Lisbon or London,” says Junqué, “Instead, in the winter we are on Berlin time, and in the summer, we are on par with Istanbul.”

The siesta was a traditional break for agricultural workers in Spain, as well as Italy, usually taken at around noon, just as the intense heat of the Mediterranean sun begins to peak.

In Spain, however, the siesta became even more prevalent in the Franco era as the failing economy forced people to take multiple jobs, says Junqué.

“People would rise at dawn to work for six to eight hours, take a break for two or three hours to rest, eat, and commute to another job. Then, work several more hours into the evening.”(SD-Agencies)

Words to Learn 相关词汇

【午睡】wǔshuì siesta an afternoon nap

【昼夜的】zhòuyè de circadian recurring naturally on a twenty-four-hour cycle

西班牙的一天是出了名的漫长。午餐下午两点才开始，工作通常晚上七点以后结束，晚餐最早八点半开始。热衷于体验当地生活的游客欣喜地发现，许多餐馆午夜过后才打烊，员工凌晨才下班。

西班牙第二副总统兼劳动和社会经济部长约兰达•迪亚兹近日谴责该国的晚睡文化“疯狂”，触到了某些人的痛处。她在本月的一次议会小组会上说：“没有哪个理智的国家让餐馆营业到凌晨一点。假装这很正常，延长营业时间直到我们失去时间观念，这太疯狂了。”

随后马德里市长伊莎贝尔•阿尤索在社交媒体平台X上回击。她说：“我们和他们不一样，他们要我们做清教徒、社会主义者，无聊地呆在家里。”尽管工作时间很长，但根据欧盟委员会的数据，西班牙人每周工作37.8小时，仅略高于欧洲平均水平。不过，他们的睡眠时间比大多数北欧人少，根据公共卫生地图，他们每晚睡7.13小时。

巴塞罗那时间利用研究所的玛尔塔•容克说，西班牙人并没有熬夜的传统。最近，西班牙政府就调整工作时间征询了该研究所的意见。

“现在西班牙人下班晚是独一份，以前不这样。我祖父母那个年代和其他国家没什么两样。他们太阳出来就起床，天黑了就下班。现在，六七点天黑了，我们还在工作。”

容克说，作息的转变可以追溯到一个人：1936年至1975年在位的军事独裁者弗朗西斯科•佛朗哥。二战期间，佛朗哥改变了西班牙的时区，与德国盟友保持一致。时间往前挪了一个小时，后面就保持下来。

容克说：“我们本该和里斯本或伦敦的时间一样，现实是，冬天我们是柏林时间，夏天我们和伊斯坦布尔同步。”午休是西班牙和意大利农业工人的传统休息时间，通常在中午前后，也就是地中海地区太阳最猛的时候。容克说，西班牙人午睡在佛朗哥时代变得更加普遍，因为经济衰退迫使人们打几份工。

“人们黎明时起床，工作六到八个小时，休息两三个小时，吃点东西，再去干下一份工作，持续几个小时直到傍晚。”(Translated by Debra)