4 ms·
In the south of Spain, and still a minority. I'm from the north and I know no one here who takes siesta.
by Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
In the south of Spain, and still a minority.
I'm from the north and I know no one here who takes siesta.
- mcv 3y agoHas it always been limited to the south? Or is the practice dying out because business has become more international and people in other countries find it inconvenient for Spain to be offline for two hours in the middle of the day?
- Al-Khwarizmi 3y agoMy grandparents (born around the 30s) never described it as a common thing here in the north. I can't vouch for previous periods, but siesta mostly makes sense for outdoors jobs in hot climates (where it's actually a great idea), so I would assume it was never common in the north as the climate is much cooler. In the south, it's also becoming less common with the change from rural to urban living and from outdoors to office jobs.
- hibikir 3y agoYou might have a long lunch break, where people go home, eat and come back, making the end of the work day pretty late. But siesta is easy to understand as a southern thing when one notices summer temperatures, and imagines physical labor outside, or a world with no AC. Trying to get anything done at 1:30 PM in, say, Jaen sounds unpleasant. Santander, Oviedo or Coruña are not going to face the same problem.
- whatisyour 3y agoSpanish siesta's are still just 2-3 hours long. In traditional Indian cultures, people would often work between 6am and 11am and then from 5pm to 9pm, because middle of the day was too hot to do any kind of physical work. So, I'm definitely going for weather as the reason for the tradition and not any timezone shift. And that also means that office work and air conditioning should reduce this practice over time.
- adamnemecek 3y agoBarcelona definitely takes siesta.
- james-bcn 3y agoThey have a long lunch break, yes (like France). But that's not a siesta. As the other poster said, that's really a Southern Spain thing.
- aerhardt 3y agoIt's not a even Southern thing for most people working office jobs and many other common jobs.
- diggan 3y agoThe city is "sleepy" around that time, true, and many stores close around that time and open again later. But I only know a handful of people who actually take naps here in the afternoon. Sometimes yeah, but if you work in a typical office/startup, you can probably count the people who take a nap after lunch on one hand.
- aerhardt 3y agoMost people working office jobs or otherwise common jobs do not.
- brozaman 3y agoI'm from Castilla y León (mid west) and the only people I know doing this are people who have to work at unusual times that wake up at 3-5 in the morning. People with normal working hours don't take siesta.