News of a study showing that a short nap during the day may help to protect the brain’s health as it ages has resulted once again in frequent deployment of what is, for Spaniards, the dreaded S-word.
Although all the recent talk of siestas may call to mind restful visions of daytime dozes, the very notion of a long daily nap in most of 21st-century Spain is as outdated as it is cliched and irksome. In fact – barring anglosajón attempts to add chorizo to paella – there are few surer ways to annoy a Spaniard than to suggest the entire nation crawls into bed every day for a three-hour kip.
Far from being an indolent slumber, the siesta of old was a much-needed escape from agricultural work in the punishing heat of the summer afternoon. But as time moved on, Spain’s economy diversified and more and more people left rural areas for big cities, the practice began to fade out.
Nuria Chinchilla, a professor of managing people in organisations at Spain’s IESE business school, said she was not at all surprised by the study’s conclusions. “People have talked for a long time about the benefits of napping and neuroscience is increasingly backing up the need for rest,” she said, but she added that siestas were largely a thing of the past.
“Spain is a very big place and people still take a half-hour siesta in some parts of the country – particularly in Andalucía where it’s very hot,” said Chinchilla.
“But it doesn’t happen in most places because cities are too big for people to be able to go home for lunch, so people eat at work or in a local restaurant.”
Chinchilla, the founder of the International Center for Work and Family, pointed out that Spain’s wider relationship with sleep was not necessarily something to emulate. The country’s punishing working day – which often starts at 9am and stretches, via a long lunch break, to 8pm – has been the subject of much debate over recent years and proposals have been made to bring it more in line with that of European neighbours.
The situation isn’t helped by the fact that Spain has been in the wrong time zone for the past 81 years. Once on the same time as the UK and Portugal, it has run an hour ahead since 1942, when Gen Francisco Franco’s regime shifted it forward during the second world war.
Then there is television. “The problem we have in Spain – apart from being in the wrong time zone – is that prime time TV begins at 10pm, so a lot of people aren’t going to bed until midnight or 1am,” said Chinchilla. “Then they get up at 7am the next day.”
Late-night TV is not solely a problem for grown-up Spaniards. Six years ago, Spanish MPs complained that the final episode of Masterchef Junior had ended after 1am.
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Despite being habitually underslept, however, Spain still has much to teach the world when it comes to the quality and length of life.
According to a study published in 2018, Spain is on course to overtake Japan as the longest-lived nation in the word, with much of that longevity down to Spaniards’ Mediterranean diet. The study, by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, suggested that people in Spain will have an average lifespan of 85.8 years by 2040, while those in Japan will lag ever so slightly behind on 85.7 years.
