“It is not reasonable that Spain is a country where meetings are called at 8 p.m. And that’s not reasonable, a country whose restaurants are open at one in the morning. » Yolanda Diaz, the labor minister of the radical left, Sumar, threw a wrench in the pond on March 4 by pleading for the “rationalization of schedules” in a country that lives at a staggered pace, largely incomprehensible in the rest of Europe.
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In Spain, people eat lunch between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., which drives tourists into despair and complicates professional relations with companies in the rest of Europe. While Germans have long since returned home, almost 30% of Spanish workers are still in the office at 7 p.m., according to a recent study commissioned by the government. And almost 10% stay there after 9 p.m. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons why, on television, prime time does not start before 10 p.m.
Almost pathological
At this late hour, clothing stores are barely closing their doors in Madrid, where business hours have been liberalized since 2012, and the Spaniards are sitting down to dinner. They have time: in Barcelona, restaurants serve indoors until 2:30 in the morning. And Malaga’s terraces are open until 2 a.m., to the great dismay of residents, who sometimes would like to sleep.
The Spaniards maintain an almost pathological relationship with these staggered schedules, a source of both a certain pride, as they are associated with a festive lifestyle, and dissatisfaction, because for many they mean the spread of their hours of work over long days, interspersed with long breaks and finishing late. The debate they provoke is not new. However, Yolanda Diaz has decided to tackle it, with the same firmness as when she carried out the last labor reform, effectively limiting the use of fixed-term contracts and other temporary contracts.
Its objective, to begin with, is to reduce working hours, fixed for forty years at 40 hours per week, and to lower it to 37.5 hours per week by 2025, without reduction in salary, thus aligning it with on hours worked in the public service. From this year, it should increase to 38.5 hours per week. While negotiations with the unions are progressing – and before the employers, very reluctant on the measure, formalize their opinion -, Mme Diaz also proposed opening “a great social debate” on the “rationalization of working hours”. “It’s madness to continue to increase hours (work) to infinity “, she added.
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