Spain will adopt summer time at dawn next Sunday, March 26, with clocks moving forward one hour, so that at 02:00 a.m. they will become 03:00 a.m., a time change that will remain in force, at least, until 2026.
In this way, the country complies with the European directive of the year 2000 that affects, without exception, all the Member States of the European Union. The first provisions on summer time were adopted in Europe in 1980 and, since 2000, with the aforementioned directive, the rules that mark its beginning in March and its end in October were established.
Given the debate that the application of the time change provokes among broad social groups, in 2018 the European Commission carried out a public consultation in which more than 80% of the 4.6 million citizens who participated were in favor of ending with time changes.
Based on this result, the Commission proposed to end this practice and for the last time change to take place in March 2019. The lack of consensus between the States and the impact assessments made Europe delay the possible cancellation of the time change until 2021, giving the different countries the possibility of choosing to remain in winter or summer time, something that is left in the drawer with the arrival of the pandemic.
In fact, the Ministry of the Presidency published a ministerial order last year establishing the dates for the time changes until Sunday, October 25, 2026, when Spain will once again enter winter time.
Spain did not get to decide which time zone to opt for. The information available to the Spanish administration to make this decision was supported, among others, by the survey that the Center for Higher Research (CIS) carried out in November 2018 -in which 65% of those surveyed declared themselves in favor of stay in summer time – and for a report requested from the committee of experts that the Government created specifically to discuss this issue in September 2018, among others.
In its report, dated March 20, 2019, the Commission of experts concluded, on the one hand, that it was not advisable to produce any precipitous change in the time zones while there was no shared consensus and practical dissemination to the public of the risks and opportunities that it brings. On the other, that the analysis of time zones should always be linked to the use of time in order to clarify concepts and seek behavioral guidelines that seek certain shared models such as co-responsibility.
The European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy published a report in 2018 stating that although seasonal time changes can produce savings, these are marginal, and that there is no certainty that the benefits will be obtained in all Member States .
The report also indicates that, although there may be energy savings in lighting, it is not so obvious that the same is true for heating, which could even increase its consumption. Furthermore, the results are difficult to interpret since they are strongly influenced by external factors such as weather or user behavior.
In Spain, there are no updated reports that make it possible to ensure that the time change is associated with energy savings. In addition, the new requirements for energy efficiency in lighting, in air conditioning systems and in the buildings themselves, as well as the progressive introduction of self-consumption, significantly alter the analyzes that were originally used to calculate these data.
