In Spain, “Lisbon time” is being called for to correct “Franco’s sympathy with Hitler’s Germany”

Changing the time is not a peaceful matter

José María Fernández-Crehuet, professor at the Polytechnic University of Madrid – and specialist in issues of balance between professional and personal life and also a researcher on the use of time -, analyzed this Monday in the Podcast “EL MUNDO al día”, from the newspaper El Mundo, the impact of the time change.

The time change dates back to Saturday 16 March 1940, when Franco’s Spain changed the time zone to GMT+1 (Central European Time) – in what was considered Franco’s “sympathy with Hitler’s Germany”. However, 84 years later, the question remains: why does a country next to Portugal have the same time as Poland, being more than three thousand kilometers away?

“Each country decides its official time, which may or may not coincide with solar time. In Spain we are one hour ahead throughout the year – and we are a country where the sun only shines for 9 hours in winter and 16 hours in summer. Even though we get a period of longer daylight in the summer, it causes historic highs in electrical consumption. Therefore, it is not clear that advancing the hour has as many energy-saving benefits as advertised”, explains the expert.

Although the biggest benefit of changing the time is “having more hours of light”, Fernández-Crehuet says that this may not have as much impact on people’s lives as they advertise, since “and it dawns later, our biological clock wakes up too later”, and people tend to leave work only when the sun sets.

Furthermore, “this time is further away from Spain than Portugal” where, remember, lunch and dinner times differ greatly from those practiced in Spanish territory.

“The best thing would be to have London and Lisbon time and make the time change like them. In favor of the time change, yes. If we had Portugal or England time we would have all the benefits of enjoying the sun as much as possible We adjust our lives to sunlight, which is why we have lunch and dinner later”, he explains, adding that “it’s good to change the time to take advantage of the hours of light”, but there are other aspects to take into account.