On the final weekends of March and October, Spain, along with much of the rest of the European continent, moves its clocks forward and back to observe Daylight Saving Time (DST), an initiative adopted by the country in 1973 in a bid to save energy at a time when a global oil crisis was bringing Western nations to the brink of collapse.
Even though Spain sits in the same meridian as the United Kingdom and Portugal, its clocks are in the same time zone as much of the rest of continental Europe, including the likes of Poland, Hungary and Serbia, some 2,000 kilometres to the east. But it hasn’t always been the case.
Until 1940, Spain worked on the same time at Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) until fascist dictator Francisco Franco demonstrated his country’s allegiance to Adolf Hitler by shifting its clocks one hour ahead to be in line with Nazi Germany. At 11.00pm on Saturday 16th March 1940, Spain’s clocks were moved forwards to midnight, an hour ahead of natural solar time. Although Germany was defeated in 1945, the clocks in Spain remained locked to CET and the country continued to be misaligned with the natural movement of the sun across the sky. And it still does.
It has long been suggested that the unusual time schedule kept by the vast majority of Spaniards is a result of being in the wrong time zone and the fact that its many social traditions were set when the country was still largely agrarian when farmers worked to solar time. These days, we all know that it’s not unusual for lunch to be enjoyed at 2.00pm whilst dinner could be served as late as 10.00pm, especially in the summer when the sun has only just dipped below the horizon.
A government study in 2013 found that the average Spaniard slept an hour less than the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended and that the faltering Spanish economy could be blamed on the country being in the wrong time zone.
In April 2016, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy pledged to move Spain back into the GMT time zone if he won re-election in June of that year, believing that by doing so, Spaniards will not only be able to finish their working day sooner, but also enjoy closer business ties with the rest of Europe, improving the nation’s economy and work-life balance. After his success in gaining re-election, his employment minister Fátima Báñez confirmed in December 2016 that the Spanish government was working on a policy which included switching the country back to GMT and the proposal had the backing of the opposition. However, nothing happened for almost six years and when something did happen, it wasn’t quite what was promised.
In October 2022, the Spanish government confirmed that a proposal by the National Commission for the Rationalisation of Spanish Time to restore natural solar time to the country had been rejected and that the country would continue observing DST and thus changing its clocks twice a year for at least another four years until 2026.
Perhaps the most obvious difference between official time and solar time in Spain is in Galicia, the westernmost region of mainland Spain. Here, during the summer, there is a huge 2½ hour difference between the official local time and the more natural mean solar time. In the city of Vigo, when the clock strikes 2.40pm, it’s actually midday according to the movement of the sun across the sky. Just 30 kilometres down the coast, across the river Minho, Portugal is one hour behind and the Galicians have long argued that they should share the same time zone.
THE GLOBAL TIME ZONES
Until the late 19th century, clocks were aligned with the natural solar time with 12 noon being the moment when the sun was as its highest point in the sky. This meant that the time observed often varied across the country. Thus, in late October, 12 noon in Xàbia would have been observed over 30 minutes earlier than 12 noon in Vigo.
At the end of the 19th century, 24 artificial time zones were created across the world in order to make it easier to coordinate transportation and communication. Within each time zone, 12 noon would be marked when the sun was at its highest in the middle of that zone and thus clocks would be “misaligned” just 30 minutes either side of that meridian.
During World War Two, Nazi Germany forced Western European states to adopt Central European Time. When the war ended in 1945, CET remained in place, leaving those Western European countries with misaligned clocks. When Daylight Saving Time (DST) – “summertime” – was implemented in the 1970s and 1980s in many European countries, ostensibly to save energy during the global oil crisis, the clocks became misaligned by a further hour for several months a year.
More than a century later, there is still no central body that coordinates these times zones in relation to natural time; they were and remain developed along political lines, which is why China has just one: Beijing Time (UTC+8). However this means that when it is 7.00am in the capital, it is the same time in the city of Kashgar, almost 3,500 miles to the west and where, just across the border in Tajikistan, it’s only 4.00am.
In 2018, the European Commission proposed to remove DST, abolishing the need to change the clocks each March and October, but no further progress was made on the idea to bring countries back into alignment with natural solar time. Scientific studies have suggested that a return to a more natural time zone would be best for the mental and physical health of people by reducing sleep deprivation which can result in health issues such as an increased risk of cancer, metabolic syndrome, heart problems and depression. A stable and correct clock time would also help enhance economic potential by improve the health of employees and thus increasing productivity and safety in the workplace. Despite the proposal’s approval by MEPs in early 2019, nothing further has happened. The pandemic, Brexit and the war in Ukraine have all been taking up much of the European Bloc’s political schedule and the removal of DST has moved way down the list of priorities.
Undeterred, a working group called The Barcelona Declaration on Time Policies proposed in 2022 that the European continent be divided into four distinct time zones which aligned geographically based on meridians to produce the appropriate natural time zones: the Azores (UTC-1), Western European (UTC), Central European (UTC+1) and Eastern European (UTC+2) with Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands sitting the Western European time zone and therefore all observing the same time. This would guarantee that each country experienced the sun in its highest position at noon which, they said, would be best for the collective health of Europe.
However, although there is no real move to bring an end to the changing of the clocks and to re-aligning countries back to a more natural solar cycle, Swedish MEP Jakop Dalunde said in late 2022 that he was confident that such proposals would be adopted by 2030.