Clocks To Go Back This Sunday 27th

October 21, 2024October 21, 2024 Madrid Metropolitan daylight saving, living in madrid, living in spain

The last Sunday in October and the last Sunday in March are marked in red on the calendar when the clocks are changed. Summer time and winter or daylight saving time, both born for the necesities of war over a century ago, with the aim of consuming less energy.

This year it falls on Sunday 27 October. Therefore, at 3am peninsular time the clocks will be put back one hour to 2am. In the Canary Islands, 2am will be changed to 1am

The official BOE (Boletín Oficial del Estado) has confirmed that according to the Royal Decree of 236/2002 Spain will keep doing this until at least 2026. They stress that any changes should come from a public consensus though how that is reached remains unclear.

Previous governments have stated that they are open to dropping it altogether.

The origins of daylight saving go back over a century during the First World War when first the Germans and Austro Hungarians introduced the measure in 1917 on Berlin time followed by the Allies and neutral Spain in 1918 and where it was adopted in line with London´s Greenwich Mean Time.

This was changed in 1940 when Madrid alligned itself with Berlin time.

However it was not uniformly imposed from the beginning, in fact from 1950 to 1973, daylight saving time was not implemented at all.

Over recent years the debate has returned. A survey by the CIS (Center for Sociological Research) found that 62% of people want to ditch daylight savings altogether, with 65% pushing to keep the summer schedule all year round.

The debate has been echoed across much of the Europe. In 2018, the European Union held a public consultation and a whopping 90% of the 4.5 million people who participated wanted to get rid of daylight savings.

Last year Ukraine abolished daylight saving altogether.

Spain’s clocks are not aligned with natural solar time. In winter, there’s a one-hour gap between the time on the clock and the actual position of the sun, and in summer, the gap increases to two hours. This misalignment can disrupt people’s natural body clocks, or circadian rhythms because the sun rises and sets at times that don’t match their typical schedules. As a result, some people might feel more tired or have trouble adjusting to work or daily routines.

Over time, this can affect sleep patterns, productivity, and overall well-being, leading to discussions about whether Spain should return to a time zone that better matches its geographical location.