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 相關詞匯 【午睡】wǔshuì siesta an afternoon nap 【晝夜的】zhòuyè de circadian recurring naturally on a twenty-four-hour cycle 西班牙的一天是出了名的漫長。午餐下午兩點才開始，工作通常晚上七點以后結束，晚餐最早八點半開始。熱衷于體驗當地生活的游客欣喜地發現，許多餐館午夜過后才打烊，員工凌晨才下班。 西班牙第二副總統兼勞動和社會經濟部長約蘭達?迪亞茲近日譴責該國的晚睡文化“瘋狂”，觸到了某些人的痛處。她在本月的一次議會小組會上說：“沒有哪個理智的國家讓餐館營業到凌晨一點。假裝這很正常，延長營業時間直到我們失去時間觀念，這太瘋狂了?！?/p> 隨后馬德里市長伊莎貝爾?阿尤索在社交媒體平臺X上回擊。她說：“我們和他們不一樣，他們要我們做清教徒、社會主義者，無聊地呆在家里。”盡管工作時間很長，但根據歐盟委員會的數據，西班牙人每周工作37.8小時，僅略高于歐洲平均水平。不過，他們的睡眠時間比大多數北歐人少，根據公共衛生地圖，他們每晚睡7.13小時。 巴塞羅那時間利用研究所的瑪爾塔?容克說，西班牙人并沒有熬夜的傳統。最近，西班牙政府就調整工作時間征詢了該研究所的意見。 “現在西班牙人下班晚是獨一份，以前不這樣。我祖父母那個年代和其他國家沒什么兩樣。他們太陽出來就起床，天黑了就下班?，F在，六七點天黑了，我們還在工作?！?/p> 容克說，作息的轉變可以追溯到一個人：1936年至1975年在位的軍事獨裁者弗朗西斯科?佛朗哥。二戰期間，佛朗哥改變了西班牙的時區，與德國盟友保持一致。時間往前挪了一個小時，后面就保持下來。 容克說：“我們本該和里斯本或倫敦的時間一樣，現實是，冬天我們是柏林時間，夏天我們和伊斯坦布爾同步?！蔽缧菔俏靼嘌篮鸵獯罄r業工人的傳統休息時間，通常在中午前后，也就是地中海地區太陽最猛的時候。容克說，西班牙人午睡在佛朗哥時代變得更加普遍，因為經濟衰退迫使人們打幾份工。 “人們黎明時起床，工作六到八個小時，休息兩三個小時，吃點東西，再去干下一份工作，持續幾個小時直到傍晚?！?Translated by Debra) | 