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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Is the typical Spanish daily schedule about to change forever? For decades, campaigners in the country have complained that the average Spaniard's habit of keeping extremely late hours and taking delightfully long lunch breaks was making everyday life harder for citizens. This week, change could finally be on the way, as 110 professional bodies in Catalonia have signed up to a plan to change the region's daily timetable by 2025, shortening the classic three-hour lunch break so that employees can finish work earlier in the evening.
Such a change would radically reshape ordinary people's lives—and controversially, it could drive a wedge between Catalonia and the rest of Spain, where the national government supports similar changes (and has adopted a shorter break for public offices) but hasn't yet fixed a timetable for action.
You could call the plan an end to national harmony, a blessed release for hard-pressed workers, or an attack on the Spanish way of life. Whatever you do, however, don't call it the end of the siesta.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @08:27PM (6 children)
Most people working office jobs don't have a 3 hour lunch break in Spain. You can find that on some (smaller) public facing shops (groceries, press stands, bars, etc.), and maybe that's what most tourists see in smaller, touristic places, but most people work either 9-to-6 (bear in mind Spain is on CEST time instead of Greenwich even though the meridian actually crosses the country, so this is basically 8-to-5) or on 8 hour shifts in places that are open from really early to really late (8am to 11pm or the like).
Not saying that such works don't exist, but they are not as prevalent as the excerpt suggests. I'm 35 and have worked for 6 different companies, never had that. One of my friends, a hairdresser, has a long lunch break (2 hours, not 3), but none other does. And, since it's been mentioned, I know a lot of people that do like to take naps - they either do it on weekends exclusively or have jobs that end before lunch, as most people don't have the time to map in the middle of the work day.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @08:40PM
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @10:09PM (2 children)
Hola, but you still eat late dinner, say past 11pm?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @01:55AM (1 child)
Different Spaniard here, no we don't. We may go out for dinner with friends and it may go on and on, but that's more like a special event. Monday to Friday, most people are done with dinner by 9, or close to 10.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @07:17PM
Just to reinforce the point, I am the original poster and, as the parent mentioned, dinner at 11 PM can happen but is very uncommon. Dinner that stretches until after 11 PM is more frequent when you are with friends, especially on Fridays and Saturdays if you are eating out. However, most people have dinner between 8 and 10 PM, and, again, bear in mind that due to us keeping the same time as Central Europe while being the westernmost part of the continent (together with Portugal and not counting islands), this is more akin to 7 to 9 in other cultures.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @08:09AM (1 child)
I moved to South France 3 years ago. For a while I did the long lunch thing with co-workers but little by little it drove me insane. Just sitting there and social talking with the same people for about an hour every single day. Then going back to work and sitting with the same people. The days we had meetings made me want to quit, it was hours and hours on end of sitting there doing nothing. The meetings are another story - "faire le tour" where every person speaks one after the other with no discussion. Awful. 20-30 people x a few mins each.
Eventually I went back to "normal" US style grab something and eat at the computer while doodling on the internet or working.
I saw the same pattern with another guy who came 1 year after me. He'd always ask if I wanted to join them and seemed enthusiastic about these novelty long lunches. I would politely decline without getting into reasons. After 6mo I saw he was also sitting at his desk during lunch like me :) I think we had a shared understanding.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday July 24 2017, @10:49PM
For small shops, the long midday break is also a time to get some administrative stuff done, especially if your job serves customers and thus has to finish a bit late.
You close the shop at peak heat around 13:00 or 14:00, after the lunch break customers, go to the bank, shopping, or to fight the administrations for a while, then reopen at 16:00, when the temperature is down and people are out, fetching their kids, walking and grabbing some stuff. That allows you to close at 18:00 or 19:00, while not working too many hours and taking care of logistics.