In the wake of recession, in 2013, Spain’s unemployment rose to 27%, while in the same year youth unemployment reached a record 56.1%. While presentismo has been an issue in Spain for decades, it has become especially prevalent since the most recent global economic crisis hit the country. It can affect motivation, job performance, work satisfaction, life satisfaction and it obviously has an effect on family life.” “ Presentismo may seem good in the short term but it is tremendously pervasive in the long term. “It is particularly prevalent in Spain due to the old mentality in traditional companies of more hours equals more work, and long working hours because of the long lunch break in many companies. “ Presentismo is spending hours more than you really need to at work in order to seem more serious and committed to your organisation,” said Marc Grau, a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and an expert in work-life balance. Instead, many Spanish businesses are afflicted by presentismo, or presenteeism. Spain’s evidently longer working hours do not equal more productivity. Here, few people have a siesta, but the long working day appears to have remained ingrained in the culture. Then between the early 1950s and early 1980s, Spain experienced unprecedented migration from rural areas to its cities, where the majority of its citizens now work. The two hour break allowed workers, especially those in rural areas, time to rest or travel after the first job ended. 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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