Una cena de debate — A Dinner-Table Debate

Spain's clocks, and the eternal dinner-table debate

Few topics start a Spanish dinner argument as reliably as the time zone. Geographically, most of mainland Spain lies at the longitude of Britain and Portugal, and Galicia lies further west than either. Yet since 1940 the country has kept the time of Central Europe, the same as Berlin, Paris and Rome. The change was made under Franco, and it is often said that it was meant to align Spain with Germany; historians debate the reasons, but the change was never reversed. The effect is that the sun rises and sets later by the clock than in most of Europe. In Galicia, summer sunsets come after ten at night, and winter mornings stay dark until nearly nine. Many people link this to Spain's famously late schedule: lunch at two or three, dinner at nine or ten, prime-time television starting late. Others, like Íñigo, argue that working hours and custom matter more, and point to the split working day, la jornada partida, with its long lunch break, as the real culprit. Associations campaigning for more rational schedules have pushed for years to change both. The Canary Islands are an exception everyone knows from the radio: news bulletins announce the time and add una hora menos en Canarias, because the islands keep the same time as London and Lisbon. The seasonal clock change is a separate debate. The European Union consulted citizens in 2018, a large majority of respondents favored ending it, and the proposal has been discussed ever since without the member states agreeing. Spain has also pushed for an end to the change. So every spring and fall, the argument at Carmen's table repeats itself at thousands of others.