As every year, at dawn on the last Sunday of March we will advance our clocks one hour, thus complying with the European Directive 2000/84 / CE that is still in force in the member states of the European Union. However, the time change has been subject to debate for some time after the European Commission carried out a public consultation in 2018 in which more than 80% of the 4.6 million citizens who participated were in favor of ending it. custom.
The suppression of the biannual time change would eliminate the health effects produced by this abrupt alteration of the circadian rhythm which, although it does not have serious consequences, it can generate discomfort and imbalances in some people or in population groups more sensitive to these changes such as nursing babies. In addition, although there are no conclusive studies in this regard, it seems that the impact on energy consumption of eliminating the time change would be minimal.
In August 2018, and at the request of the Council of Ministers, a Committee of Experts was created in Spain, made up of prominent professionals from all sectors involved to thoroughly analyze the repercussions and impact that the abolition of the time change would have. Although it was said that 2021 would probably be the last change, the covid-19 pandemic has altered all agendas and we may still have to wait for something else.
A controversial decision
In addition, in case of suppressing the time change, the most controversial decision would remain to be made: what time do we stay?
According to the report published in March 2019 by the aforementioned Commission for the reform of the official time: “ The opinion of the experts on the seasonal change of time is neither unanimous nor conclusive. One party would prefer to keep the time change as it has been done to date, another would choose to adopt the fixed winter time based mainly on health criteria and use of sunlight hours and there are also experts in favor of keeping the time fixed. summer time, taking into account a foreseeable negative impact on the tourism sector, which represents around 12% of our GDP. “
José Luis Casero, president of the National Commission for the Rationalization of Spanish Timetables (ARHOE) and who was part of this committee of experts, is in favor of keeping the current schedule: “ I don’t like to talk about daylight saving time. winter because they are not exact terms to begin with. We adopt the first in March, which is not exactly summer, and the second in October, which is not winter. In addition, these names have many connotations, summer reminds us of vacations, the sun … intuitively we like it much more ”.
As the expert reminds us, the time in Spain is not that of the meridian that corresponds to us (Greenwich Mean Time, UTC + 0), since in 1940 the +1 time zone was adopted for the peninsula and the Balearic Islands. The researcher Pere Planesas, in an article published in the Yearbook of the Madrid Astronomical Observatory, explains: “The time change adopted in March 1940 deserves special consideration. It is written as a typical advance of the official summer time, noting that ‘the date on which the normal time has to be reestablished will be marked in due course’. Such a reestablishment did not take place in the fall, as was customary, nor has it taken place since then. In practice, it meant a permanent change in the official time in Spain, adopting, without saying it and possibly without planning it, that of the +1 time zone for the peninsula and the Balearic Islands and that of the 0 time zone for the Canary Islands ”.
As a result, in the peninsula and the Balearic Islands we have UTC + 1 between October and March, and UTC + 2 the rest of the year . “Most of the experts in the health and social fields – health workers, teachers, chronobiologists … – opted for UTC + 1 time (wrongly called winter time)”, explains Casero. “If we take a map of light and darkness throughout the year in our country we see it clearly: in case of staying with UTC + 2 there would be around four months (from November to February) in which in some areas of the country it would dawn between 9 or even 10 in the morning. At a physiological level, we know that the human body needs at least one hour of light to begin to be productive, so we are talking about thousands of workers and students who will go to the office or school at night and that there will not yet be, in in a way, awakened ”.
More reasonable hours
On the other hand, we know that Spain is one of the European countries with later schedules and where people sleep less. With summer time, for example, many parents who want their children to rest enough hours have real problems getting their children to bed, as they refuse to do so if it is daytime. It is difficult to dine early when there is natural light at ten o’clock at night, leisure activities inevitably lengthen and, ultimately, this schedule favors Spaniards, children and adults, going to sleep later than our European neighbors.
“Many people say that they prefer summer time because that is how they leave work at 7 o’clock and can play sports or have a drink on a terrace with natural light,” reflects Casero. “ But the underlying problem is not the light at 7 o’clock, but that you leave work at that time . That is precisely one of the objectives of ARHOE: to achieve the harmonization of our work and personal life, and that happens among other things by having more reasonable working hours. And, on the other hand, we must take into account the weather of each season: even if we keep UTC + 2, it is cold in winter. Yes, it may be daytime at 7 in the afternoon, but having that long-awaited beer on a terrace during the day has nothing to do with doing it in summer. In the end, what conditions us the most is the climate of each season, which is what it is and cannot be changed, just as you cannot change the number of hours of natural light you have in winter and the number you have in summer. In that matter, the time zone does not matter ”, concludes the expert.
The heated debate around the time change is by no means close to ending. In any case, it seems that for the moment we are going to continue the same and this weekend, we like it more or less, we will move our clocks forward one hour.
