The anomalous Spanish schedules have their origin in the Franco regime and their continuation in the inability to correct them in the almost half century that we have had democracy. It all starts with the incorporation of Spain into a time zone that does not correspond to it, that of Central Europe, through a ministerial order from 1940, which some interpret as a gesture from the Spanish leader to the German chancellor, a wink from dictator to dictator.
Then came the massive practice of moonlighting in Spain, which pushed for an increasingly longer break at midday to give the worker time to eat and move on to the second occupation. The arguments that the Spanish time anomaly has to do with the climate and tourism clash with the comparison with other neighboring countries, such as Italy, as southern and touristy as Spain, and with more normalized days.
How can these schedules be summarized? We work a number of hours similar to those of our European neighbors, but much worse distributed. They expand throughout the day, have a long pause at midday and are the ones that end the latest. With data, 30% of people in Spain work until 7 p.m. and 10%, until 9 p.m. And they are not night workers. Furthermore, compaction is conspicuous by its absence. Between 8 a.m. and 8:10 a.m., 14.3% of Spaniards work or study, and between 8 p.m. and 8:10 p.m., 10.9%, according to data collected by the Time Use Initiative.
“It is a time anomaly that entails serious damage to health, efficiency, conciliation and co-responsibility,” says Marta Junqué, coordinator of this association and who directed the study of the Ministry of Labor to prepare a law of uses in the last legislature. weather.
Furthermore, the extension of working hours has many derivatives. For example, many businesses close on weekdays at 9 p.m. and bars and restaurants much later. Spain is one of the countries where commerce closes later, and this despite the fact that in recent years the liberalization of hours has spread in European countries.
In Germany, shops are open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., with Sundays and holidays closed, and shops with extended hours close at 11 p.m. at the latest and are only open on Sunday afternoons and no holidays. For its part, in France, business hours go from 8 or 9 a.m. to 7 or 8 p.m., and in Italy, it is between 9 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. in the morning, and between 3:30 p.m.-4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. -8 pm in the afternoon.
It also has an effect on the television schedule, with the latest prime time in all of Europe, and on cutting sleep time. In Spain we sleep less than in neighboring countries, about twenty minutes less than in the euro zone, which, experts say, affects people’s productivity, mental health and physical health.
However, it is not easy to modify schedules because it is a highly sensitive issue. It was seen again this week. The statements of the Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, about the unreasonableness of restaurants being open until one in the morning, although later qualified to focus on the rights of workers, have provoked a strong reaction from the hospitality sector. . The truth is that the coalition government’s program includes approving a time use law, which was left hanging from the previous legislature, although experience shows that it will not be easy.
There was an attempt with the Zapatero Government, with an initiative by the then vice president Teresa Fernández de la Vega, for a global change of schedules, and another during Rajoy’s time, more focused on the change of the time zone. None prospered.
“We look for proposals that generate consensus,” says Marta Junqué, adding that specific solutions do not work, but rather that agreements must be sought for a global, holistic approach to schedules. “Time is a puzzle, and we have to find a social pact to fit all the pieces together,” she says.
