Since 1942 Spain is in the wrong zone. This anomaly, along with moonlighting after the war, engendered the current English time, which prevents the reconciliation between work and personal life, subtract each day one hour of sleep negatively affects workplace accidents, low productivity, school failure, employment discrimination against women (especially a mother), and even high levels of skin cancer tourists.
The Streamlining and Standardization English times to the Union European necessarily involves the return to Western European Time (ie Greenwich Mean Time, United Kingdom, Ireland, Portugal, Morocco and Canary Islands), to sleep an hour and a good breakfast at home instead of out in the middle morning, and spend an hour lunch instead of two. is the only possible way to retrieve the hour and a half, 10% of our waking hours, nearly two weeks a year, now every day we lose our privacy.
Want to check? Delay your clock one hour. You'll have to do some mental gymnastics to avoid reaching an hour late your appointments. But see that every time you look at your watch, make more sense what you're doing at that time. Except perhaps the time to get up: you will see that it is too early. If you have flexible working hours, sleep an hour longer and recover this time at noon, having lunch in an hour instead of two. You will take the jackpot in the afternoon: leave work an hour earlier!
Become a part of the lobby that encourages the Government to return to Spain after 67 years, Western European Time.
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humans are able to get used to any more or less serious anomaly, to the point of not considering or even reject the most obvious choice. The same is true for three generations with the times in Spain. Is this the only country in the world where every day is going to lunch when the other humans back to work, going to dinner when it's time to go to bed and sleep an hour less. It is also the only free country where the professional rewards are simple presence to slave mode, and which seem to require two hours for lunch, against all logic of modern efficiency. And yet, many English often declare without question they are happy with your schedule. Or not ... In fact English increasingly complain of failing to reconcile their professional and private life, and sincerely regret not knowing how I could fix.
All customs have a specific source, profane and sometimes even banal. The wrong time English has been established gradually, in step with a well-defined events. Because make no mistake: this schedule or the weather is Mediterranean, or English culture or the nap, nor is life: three generations at most.
to end nineteenth century, the official time was different in each village, and was determined by the sundial. It was noon when the sun transiting the meridian, and this time was different as one moved through the country from east to west (or vice versa). With the advent of railways and the need to establish a common schedule in distant places, they invented the famous spindles, so uniformed about two dozen geographical blocks, each from the North Pole to the South Pole, in whose interior was strictly same time, coinciding roughly with the old solar time. And since then, the role of sundials in our rustic facades have become merely decorative.
But in Spain the schedule was marred by two well-defined events.
The first step was the implementation by the Nazis in May 1940 of the Central European Time (CET) in the newly occupied countries. Until then, Spain, France and the Benelux had a time difference with Germany and Italy, as they were with the United Kingdom and Portugal at the correct time zone of the Western European Time (HEO). The change passed almost unnoticed, through the annual changes to summer time and winter and much more pressing concerns of the Second World War or the war in Spain.
just two months before the Second World War, each country adopted as usual the summer time. In Spain, namely on 16 March by President of the Government Order that established in Article 5: "Timely shall specify the date of the restoration of its normal hours."
The May 16, 1940, barely a week after the invasion, Germany clocks forward again in France and the Benelux countries, to align with the Germans, as Spain went on to have an hour apart busy with their French neighbors. In fact, the Nazis occupied all of France until 1942, and meanwhile the southern part of France was free to the HEO, together with Spain.
In autumn 1940, Germany and occupied France did not return to winter time, and in 1941 also did not change the clocks, it took until the fall of 1942 to return to winter time (CET). Spain during this time also played their watches, in the autumn of 1940 did not return to winter time (HEO), and in 1941 was the year in summer time it had adopted on March 16, 1940.
The May 2, 1942, Spain clocks forward again, standing now in the summer time spindle HEC Together with Germany and occupied countries, and a time difference with Portugal, who took no part in the war. The move was understandable: to the United Kingdom, which was busy but not involved in the war, had freely adopted the German time since the May 4, 1941.
After the war, the United Kingdom finally returned to the HEO on October 7, 1945, but France and the Benelux never returned, and Spain either. Thus, the return referred to in Article 5 of the Presidential Order of 1940 never came, and this was instrumental in creating the wrong time English: Spain is much farther west than France, the English and the sun is too important to be fooled by a standard time, so we are having lunch and dinner at the same time ever (the one and eight pm, solar time), but now the clock is another something different (two and nine pm, standard time).
The second step was the phenomenon of the moonlighting of postwar Spain, much needed time to rebuild an entire country, as irrelevant to our modern society. After the civil war, Spain was objectively economic autarky, without colonies, without natural resources, with important parts of the country destroyed, with significant bleeding in human capital, and a little industrialized society. To raise the country had no choice but to work for two. The very fact of staying on the spindle of the HEC was not enough to operate the mess of the schedule: moonlighting consolidated a clear division of the day in a long first day in the morning, rising early and working well until two, then a pause important and finally a second afternoon session that seemed endless. A legacy of this step is the time "from nine to two, still used in many banks and governments, and quite original when we compare to the rest of the modern world.
Well. But what is now the problem? Is twofold.
First, if we do not hesitate to have the anomaly of the two lunch and dinner at nine, then we should be consistent to the end and start work at ten o'clock. But this does not happen, and we discover with astonishment the first problem: Longer working hours in the morning!, Starting too early, according to solar time. And as we can not stand working five hours, after we lifted too early to feel like breakfast, many have adopted the custom, truly curious, to "have breakfast" to "mid-morning," and here is lost the first half hour.
Second, we devote too much time on your lunch break, often two hours, when there is no need for a modern and efficient working day, nor enough time to most of the English in our environment much more urban than in neighboring countries, to go home and return only to eat (in any case, children are left at school).
Total: every working day is an hour and a half, almost 10% of our waking hours, or nearly two weeks in a year!, Which are diluted in the working day and is irretrievably lost to privacy . No wonder the frustration of many English, when you think about your schedule!
However, the remedy is easy. Just to respond to Article 5 of that Order of the Presidency, to effectively "back to normal." Since 1942, Spain provided the official time of the next zone, whose meridian passes through Bodø, Växjö, Prague, Linz, Ljubljana, Rijeka, Salerno, Catania ... Back to normal then it means that Spain take the official time of the United Kingdom, Portugal, Morocco and Canary Islands, or put another way: the Western European Time instead of Central, which belongs geographically. The Greenwich Meridian passes through the peninsula on its side of the east, and have built several monuments to highlight it, such as the arch over the highway AP2 between Lleida and Zaragoza. Meridian also passes through the center of the city of Castellón de la Plana, so that we can perfectly rename the Greenwich meridian as the Castellón.
In practice, this return to the correct time would be like in the forties but in reverse, avoiding the following change to summer time, and delay times an hour more socially relevant officers (such as news and football matches for example), just from the same day that other countries European clocks forward. It is therefore careful preparation, the task of government. Thus, without changing the clocks, but the times, we spent the winter time (CET) to summer time (HEO). And the change has been finally consummated when the clocks back next fall to return, along with other countries, the winter time (HEO).
With the restoration of the Western European Time, many waters return to their beds. Input, we will eat like the rest of us: at one and eight o'clock in the afternoon, when the newscast also worldwide. Go home at six or even five, and have an evening worthy for the time not only possible, it is easy!
On the other hand, continue lifting at the same time "clock", but actually a time (solar) later. Where's the catch? In sleep an hour longer, and spend just one hour lunch: take the famous "European hours", the journey continues back to six, with a stop of one hour, one to two, exactly half of the working day . And you will not need to lose half an hour to "go to breakfast" to "mid-morning" and that there will be no mid-morning and have breakfast before you leave home at eight (formerly nine) in the morning. Do the calculation and asombrémonos: Recovered each day and a half hours to privacy!
And there are more advantages: reduced sleep an hour workplace accidents, the continuous workday better motivate employees, increase productivity, achieved gender equality and end the culture of presenteeism and the Third World Maternity blatant discrimination in the workplace, the better alignment of working hours in schools will improve school performance foreign tourists were not adapted to the English time and not be exposed to the sun at the worst time of day, causing the worst Global cancer statistics skin on the English coast ...
But what we could not achieve all this without taking the time to Greenwich or Castellón? Well, no sir. As we have seen over three generations: the sun really matter. To achieve the desired effect, we should advance the lunch until solar noon, and this simply will not happen. Without the HEO, trying to fix the wrong time English means fighting the sun, and this is a losing battle before: it is simply impossible.
But what this change will not further apart than the countries around us? Absolutely. This distance exists today and is well known: it is very difficult for a Madrid and Vienna are in the same time in their respective offices, when the Viennese Madrid wants to call it that has "gone to breakfast," and when he returns from this " midmorning, the Viennese are going to lunch. When he returns, he goes to lunch in Madrid. And on his return and the Viennese are leaving for home. With the change of the official time in Spain, this will remain exactly the same (except that the Madrid and not go to breakfast at "mid-morning", or two hours will be at noon) is a simple matter of hours in different solar each site. The only thing that will change is that the clock in Madrid indicate a different time in Vienna, but both continue to practice their own hours solar time.
Spain will always have an hour of any part of Europe. Or Portugal, Canaries, UK and Ireland, as now, or with Germany, Italy and the rest of central Europe. If France returns to the HEO together with Spain, the time difference will be in the Rhine, and if not, be located in the Pyrenees.
Anyway, it should be noted that the most advanced and richest country in the world, the United States of America, works without problem with no less than seven different time zones: there are more one hour difference as we travel to Puerto Rico to New York to Chicago to Phoenix to Los Angeles to Anchorage to Honolulu. And absolutely nothing happens.
not forget: it is not unknown to test a change to see if it works, but to return to normal life, although far away, because it is nearly seventy years and there is hardly anyone to tell us . And this is not the simple technique of relocating either the clocks, but to rebalance the schedule: eight hours work, eight hours recreation and eight hours of rest. Search and rediscover the lost time, what satisfaction!
all know that a final remedy is to treat the symptoms but to cure the disease that causes them. While we do not adopt the Greenwich Mean Time - the time of Castellón, caramba! -, All attempts to reconcile our schedules will be well-intentioned patches but precious little real impact.
And if it turns out that the real cure is easy to adopt, and above does not cost a single euro, why wait?
