Rob Horgan
THE Spanish siesta is in danger of getting the chop.
The government is considering replacing the ‘Nazi time zone’ it currently operates in with Greenwich Mean Time.
Spain abandoned GMT some 70 years ago as General Franco showed his allegiance to Hitler’s Germany.
And after years of talk about returning to the previous time zone, Minister Fatima Banez is now leading the charge to move Spain’s clocks back an hour.
The move would see the famous Spanish midday nap given the boot, with the working day ending at 6pm inline with the rest of Europe.
“There would be no disruption or confusion for citizens under this proposed change,” Banez said. “I will be talking with employers and unions for their opinion on finishing the working day inline with the rest of Europe.”
She added: “The proposals I have put in place will help employees achieve a better work-family balance.”
They don’t need to change to UK time in order to ditch siesta, they could stay on CET and still do it. How will this work in regions like Catalonia and Basque country where people live in Spain and work in France and vice versa?
Losing daylight in the winter evenings is a bad idea and might affect tourism – Majorca want to stay on summer time all year to boost tourism so how will that work? Will some regions stick with CET?
Seasonal Affective Disorder is a serious problem in the UK so I hope they bin this idea.
Rajoy and his cabal might suffer “separation anxiety” at having to sever their links with their fascist past, if it is indeed “past”.
It is common sense that this happens in Spain – not a frequent occurence in the
Iberian peninsula lol.
I don’t know whether ‘Nazi time’ is the best way of describing the Spanish clock.
When the Spaniards feel they do not have enough problems they produce “solutions”, where nobody suspects that there exists a problem.
Might be OK for Air-conned office and shop workers to abandon the Siesta hours but there are still thousands of field workers that might not enjoy working in the midday sun. Remember Spain is still the market garden of Europe.
She added: “The proposals I have put in place will help employees achieve a better work-family balance.”
How can this be true, when parents will be finishing work, collecting children from day care, driving home and then falling asleep in the chair because they are tired. There will be no interaction, no home cooked meals, except maybe weekends, and no parent child time.