Hitler is still keeping Spain awake after all these years
What's the story
The world will always remember Hitler for the rise of Nazism, the Holocaust of Jews, and being one of the reasons of Second World War. However, in Spain the trouble with Hitler is a little bit more than usual.
Hitler is dead and done with but that bugger is still not letting the Spaniards sleep properly.
What do I mean? Read, to find out.
GMT
What are we talking about
The trouble is, for almost 70 years Spaniards are stuck in the wrong time zone. Ideally, the country should sit comfortably along with UK, Portugal, and Morocco and be in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
But Spain went a bit ahead and paired itself with the Serbian capital Belgrade, which is situated almost 2,500km away from Madrid. Therein, lies the trouble.
WWII
But, why did they do that?
To understand the goof up, let's go back to 1941; where the Second World War was taking place in full swing. Every nation was either siding with Allied forces i.e. Britain, France, United States of America or the Axis Powers, consisting of Germany, Italy, and Japan.
Spanish General Francisco Franco was all for Germany and adopted its time zone, to show his love/solidarity/affinity.
Spain
What! Nobody complained?
Spaniards had their own bit of trouble aka Spanish Civil War on their plate and frankly, it didn't cross their mind. They just went about their business with the clock.
A clock which was now running 1 hour late to accommodate the shift, so you wake up an hour late, eat an hour late, go to sleep an hour late.
PM
They must have fixed it, right?
You would expect that once the World War II ended, the time hiccup was corrected, sadly it wasn't.
Things got interesting in 2016; when Spanish PM said that the government is planning to shorten the workday schedule by ending it at 6 pm rather than the usual 8 pm and they were also mulling on going back to GMT.
This sparked a huge debate.
Tourists
No. This is why
Thanks to the late time zone, according to the Spanish way of life, the sun rises later and also sets later, leading to lingering summer evenings and picturesque sunsets at 10 pm.
This is what, the tourist resorts believed, attracts tourists and, therefore; they condemned the idea of going back to GMT.
However, a country is not all about tourists, it's about the citizens.
Sleep
What about the Spaniards?
Thanks to the goofed up time zone, Spaniards go through sleep deprivation and their productivity also goes for a toss.
Their day starts at 9 am, they get a two-hour lunch break between 2-4 pm and go back home at 8 pm, which means that their social life can only start post work, which ends late and in turn pushes back the sleeping hour.