I am sorry but this is totally backwards. As a Valencian Spaniard I want to set the record straight. First, siesta is not dead. However, it is considered mostl

I am sorry but this is totally backwards. As a Valencian Spaniard I want to set the record straight. First, siesta is not dead. However, it is considered mostly a holiday luxury or reserved for small shops. It is normal in the extremely hot summer, after lunch we stop for 1h or so. While I do not do siesta, I would say about half+ of the people I know do it (holiday times). I would also say it is highly coupled with the summer heat wave though, in winter not so many people do it. Then, late lunch. First off, Spain is actually in the "wrong" time zone. We are at the same longitude as UK but it's 1 hour later here. What this means in practical terms is that when it's 2pm here, it is in 1pm relative to the light-time/circadian clock. However that still does not totally explain the really late lunches. The main reason for that is that we have "almuerzo" at around ~11am (note: the word "almuerzo" in some zones in Spain is "lunch", and in some others it's a mid-morning snack, or second breakfast as I like to call it. I mean here the mid-morning snack). It depends on the job, on the person and on many things, but it's not uncommon that it consists of a mid-sized sandwich of Spanish bread. This [random] image is a quite accurate picture of the places where almuerzo is had and on the type of almuerzo we eat: http://cdn.traveler.es/uploads/images/thumbs/es/trav/2/s/2016/17/medio_bocata_en_la_pascuala_8514_570x.jpg http://cdn.traveler.es/uploads/images/thumbs/es/trav/2/s/201... So as you can see, we have a different, important course around 10:30-11:30 that makes us not remain hungry until lunch. Some people prefer lighter snacks of course. Also, breakfast is normally light as we don't have to worry about hunger since we have our almuerzo later on. Normally you'd combine breakfast and almuerzo; if you have too much breakfast then you have a light almuerzo or nothing at all, and the same otherwise.