![]() ![]() This disjointed day came about because in post Civil War Spain, many people worked two jobs to support their families, one in the morning and one in the late afternoon. Traditionally, the Spanish working day was split into two distinct parts: people would work from 9am until 2pm, stop for a two hour lunch break and return to work from 4pm until around 8pm. If we bear in mind that they divided periods of light into 12 hours, then the sixth hour corresponds in Spain to the period between 1pm (in winter) and 3pm (in summer).” ![]() “The Romans stopped to eat and rest at the sixth hour of the day. “The word siesta comes from the Latin sexta,” explains Juan José Ortega, vice president of the Spanish Society of Sleep and a somnologist - an expert in sleep medicine. So what has led a nation famous in part for its supposedly casual attitude to labour to become one of the hardest working in Europe?īefore tackling this question, it is perhaps worth pausing to consider that the siesta does not originally come from Spain at all - it is from Italy. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Spaniards rack up 1,691 hours at work each year while British workers do 1,674 annually and the Germans work just 1,371 hours a year. In fact, the Spanish spend far more time working than many of their counterparts in Europe. Almost 60% of Spaniards never have a siesta, while just 18% will sometimes have a midday nap, according to a recent survey.
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