THE SPANISH SYSTEM of late nights and siestas has long been envied by idlers abroad. “Twenty years in Europe and still no siesta?” used to be our campaigning slogan.

The notion of sleeping every afternoon and partying all night has its obvious attractions. But it appears that the Spaniards don’t like it. They want to change the clocks and introduce a nine-to-five.

“Because of a great historical error, in Spain we eat at 2pm, and we don’t have dinner until 9pm, but according to the position of the sun, we eat at the same time as the rest of Europe – 1pm and 8pm,” campaigner Nuria Chinchilla has said. “We are living with 71 years of jetlag and it’s unsustainable.”

The error he speaks of is a decision by General Franco in 1942 to synchronise the clocks with Fascist Germany.

Campaigners say that the system leads to longer working hours than the rest of Europe. A widely quoted statistic is that the Spanish work nearly 300 more hours a year than the supposedly industrious Germans.

The Catalan government has promised to reform working hours from July of this year.

“The time to make decisions has come,” said Francesc Homs, a spokesman for the Catalan regional government.

We naturally support the reduction of the length of the working day, but will mourn the death of the siesta.

ENDS