My grandparents (born around the 30s) never described it as a common thing here in the north. I can't vouch for previous periods, but siesta mostly makes sense for outdoors jobs in hot climates (where it's actually a great idea), so I would assume it was never common in the north as the climate is much cooler.

In the south, it's also becoming less common with the change from rural to urban living and from outdoors to office jobs.

You might have a long lunch break, where people go home, eat and come back, making the end of the work day pretty late. But siesta is easy to understand as a southern thing when one notices summer temperatures, and imagines physical labor outside, or a world with no AC. Trying to get anything done at 1:30 PM in, say, Jaen sounds unpleasant. Santander, Oviedo or Coruña are not going to face the same problem.

They have a long lunch break, yes (like France). But that's not a siesta. As the other poster said, that's really a Southern Spain thing.

The city is "sleepy" around that time, true, and many stores close around that time and open again later.

But I only know a handful of people who actually take naps here in the afternoon. Sometimes yeah, but if you work in a typical office/startup, you can probably count the people who take a nap after lunch on one hand.

Most people working office jobs or otherwise common jobs do not.