Wake Up, Spain! Bustle Of Modern Life May Be Killing Spaniards’ Traditional Siesta

The Spanish tradition of siesta — something overworked and exhausted Americans may be quite jealous of — may be disappearing.

In the U.S., it’s hard to imagine the average work day in Spain. For 70 years, people have worked a “jornadas partidas,” or a split work day. They start at 8 a.m. and work until 1:30 p.m., have siesta until 5 p.m., then go back to the office and work until 8 p.m., NBC News reported.

During siesta, most people in the cities don’t nap. They run errands, have a long lunch, pick up their kids from school, or go shopping. Brian Russak, an American expat who has lived in Spain for 11 years, has gotten used to the siesta as a part of life in the European country.

“We live in such a harried, nonstop, 24/7 world and one of the things I love about living in Spain — and what makes it so unique in our increasingly cookie-cutter global society — is its adherence to traditions and knack for doing things in a very ‘Spanish’ way. When I first started living here it drove me mad. But I quickly adapted. Now I absolutely love the rhythm and timing of the traditional Spanish day.”

It’s not quite as simple as preserving the Spanish way of living life, though that is part of it. Siesta isn’t really observed nationwide, but mostly in rural areas and especially in rural Andalusia in the southern part of Spain.

The origins of siesta are in agriculture. According to The Guardian, it gave farmers a break during the hottest part of the day. But cultures in colder climates also practice midday naps, so that explanation is debatable.

And in modern Spain, the economy is no longer based in agriculture and people who live in the city work too far from home to take siesta (in its traditional sense: napping) in the afternoon.

“It’s not like everyone is swinging in a hammock,” Russak said. “It’s just the rhythm of the day.”

But that rhythm may be bad for the economy and that’s the primary motivation behind a plan from Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, to rid the nation of siesta and trim the work day by two hours to end at 6 p.m. Apparently, Spaniards’ productivity even lags behind the relaxed, vacation-loving French.

He also wants to change everyone’s clocks, moving Spain from Central European time (which they changed to 70 years ago to express loyalty to Adolf Hitler’s Germany) to the Western European time zone. Nuria Chinchilla, the director of the International Center on Work and Family, explained the nightmare caused by this “great historical error” to the Washington Post.

“In Spain we eat at 2 p.m., and we don’t have dinner until 9 p.m., but according to the position of the sun, we eat at the same time as the rest of Europe: 1 p.m. and 8 p.m. We are living with 71 years of jet-lag, and it’s unsustainable.”

Modern life is also at odds with siesta and it has a negative effect on working, social, and family life in Spain. People don’t get home until after 8 p.m., so they eat dinner and go to bed late, meaning the Spaniards are a very sleepy people.

Children start school early and have their own siesta from 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m., finishing school at 5 p.m. But there are critical problems with this arrangement.

For one, parents who can’t afford school meals have to bring their kids food four times day. And for another, the three-hour gap between when school and work ends results in hefty childcare bills.

So while overworked Americans may envy a midday siesta to break up the grind of daily life, in the modern world, such breaks may not fit. And that could be a shame; studies have linked a decreased risk of high blood pressure to siesta and found other health benefits.

Unfortunately, the issue is far more complicated, as Barcelona resident Jose Guerra pointed out.

“There is nothing wrong, once in a while, with an invigorating — if short — power siesta that helps you through the day, particularly in a country with so many active hours as Spain. I don’t think it is a good idea to just ‘get rid’ of the siesta just like that, without changing or considering other important aspects.”

[Photo By Christopher Furlong]