Food & Drink News ~ Why the Spanish eat so late in the day

There are many reason why you may think the Spanish eat so late, the intense summer heat, the fact that many still take a siesta or that food in Spain is still such a social event. However, as logical as some of these facts are, it is not the real reason. Spain in fact is in the wrong time zone and the reason for this is political. Spain actually sits on the same longitude as the UK, Morocco and Portugal and should fall under GMT. But in 1940 during World War 2, General Franco moved the clocks forward an hour in line with Germany as an act of solidarity and the country has remained on CET until this day. As a result this pushed the eating habits of the Spanish an hour forward.

After nearly 80 years in the wrong time zone, this may be about to change. In 2016, Spain�s Prime Minister Rajoy announced that he wants to make changes to the workday. He intends to scrap the tradition of the siesta to enable the working day to finish earlier and put Spain back on it�s original time zone. If the plans go ahead it will take the Spanish some getting used to, in the summer months the sun doesn�t set until around 10pm and the afternoon siesta in the intense heat of the day will be a thing of the past. The experts maintain that the changes would be an over all benefit to the nation�s health If the time zones changed, the sun would rise one hour earlier making waking up more natural, meal times would be one hour earlier and as a result everyone would get an extra hour�s sleep.