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Download Spanish lawmakers want to shift the country back a time zone and impose more healthy, family-friendly working hours: a tricky job in a land known for siestas and late-night partying. A typical Spaniard's working day? "Start at 9 am, stop at 2 pm to eat until 4 or 5, then start again and work until about 8 pm," said Nuria Chinchilla, a specialist in work and family life at Spain's IESE Business School. "No one expects you home before 9 pm." Some warn this lifestyle - which dates from around the 1940s when poor Spaniards would work two jobs to make ends meet - is harming their personal lives now. It leads to a lower quality of life, less time spent with the family and lower birth rates, more accidents at work, and more school dropouts because children go to bed too late, the economist said. Her words echo warnings in a report recently approved by the parliament, which called for Spain to turn back its clocks, jumping west an hour to the same time zone as Britain and Portugal. Although it lies far to the west of Europe in a line with those countries, mainland Spain has been in the same time zone as central Europe since 1942. Ignacio Buqueras, chairman of the commission that drew up the report, said Spain needs a "rational timetable ... eight hours for work, eight hours for rest and eight hours for other activities". "The fact that Spain for more than 71 years has not been in the correct time zone causes us to get up too early and sleep on average one hour less than the time recommended by the World Health Organization," said his report. | 
