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Comment by NeoTar | Hacker News Reader

Spain is a complicated example because it's also in the 'wrong' timezone - it's on Central European Time (UTC+1), and should be really be on UTC.

So if people are living their lives roughly aligned to the sun, then they'll naturally wake and sleep later.

It would be interesting to contrast that with Athens which is more aligned to the correct timezone for their longitude.

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But doesn't Spain's culture of late nights and siestas date from long before anyone bothered to coordinate clocks?

[edit: added "from", extended "any" to "anyone". Perhaps I'm less efficient early in the morning than I supposed.]

I could certainly believe that. Another interesting comparison would be with Portugal, which is in some ways culturally similar to Spain, but maintains UTC.

There is a push in Spain to try and re-align the timezone - see for instance this Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/22/spania...

If the EU plan to abolish the clock-change, and at the same time allow countries to choose which time-zone to adopt actually happens it will be interesting to see if the Spanish government chooses to use this opportunity to switch to UTC.

Sure, but the point is that if you control for the effect of timezone displacement and just look at the sun, which is probably what originally shaped schedules in different human cultures, there's not that much difference between sleep and meal times in Spain and neighboring countries. Most of the perceived difference comes from the fact that a Spanish clock will be showing a later hour than most other countries when the sun is at a given point in the sky.

For example, I'm from Spain, and according to some quick searches, solar noon where I am today was at 13:47 (vs. 12:09 in New York, 12:14 in London, 12:20 in Berlin, 12:50 in Lisbon, 13:04 in Paris). So it's no wonder most Spanish people have lunch at around 14 (equivalent to eating at 12:22 in New York) and dinner past 21.

By the way, siesta culture is more of a stereotype than a real thing by now. I don't know anyone who regularly naps during the workweek (except kids and elderly). I guess it might still happen among physical workers in hot agricultural areas of the south, where you're not going to work the fields after noon under the scorching sun, but it's not a reality for the overwhelming majority of people.

I am from Greece. I cannot remember if our classes started at 0800 or 0900. But I remember that exams did start at 0800.

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