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Business Daily

Why does everyone work late in Spain?

Business Daily

BBC

Business

4.4816 Ratings

🗓️ 12 June 2024

⏱️ 18 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The European country is known for its late night eating culture, the average time for an evening meal is past 9PM.

One of the reasons for that is the working day across Spain which has a history of going on way into the evening.

But recently the second deputy minister of Spain called this ‘madness’, saying eating so late and working late isn’t good for work-life balance.

We speak to a restaurant owner and the CEO of digital agency that offers flexible working to talk about working culture and discuss how likely it is that Spain will change its habits.

(Picture: Mikel López de Viñaspre, the co-founder and chief executive of the Sagardi Group of Basque restaurants. Credit: Sagardi Group)

Presented and produced by Hannah Mullane

Transcript

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0:00.0

Maybe 8.30 or 9.

0:05.0

The ideal time is 9.

0:07.0

I'm at 8pm.

0:10.0

What time do you like to eat your evening meal?

0:15.0

The Spanish have a reputation for eating late.

0:17.0

In fact, they do lots of things later in the day than most other countries.

0:21.7

Late lunch, late finish at work, late dinner, it's all late. So it's Spain that we're heading

0:27.3

to on this episode of Business Daily with me, Hannah Malayne, to take a look at why everything

0:31.8

happens much later in the day there and whether that might be about to change.

0:36.1

Pick hour for lunch in Spain, still 2.30pm and the peak hour for dinner is like around

0:43.5

9, 20pm, so quite late. But at the same time, many people, especially younger workers,

0:51.2

they are pushing new habits into the culture.

0:55.3

Younger people are pushing for a change in working culture and for companies that employ

0:59.2

lots of young people, it's a no-brainer. To recruit the best staff, you need to offer flexibility.

1:05.1

I think today, our average age in the company is probably 28, 30 years old.

1:14.4

If you want to attract young employees, talented people,

1:17.4

it would be hard not to have an option of flexibility.

1:21.6

Today on Business Daily, we'll take a look at how Spanish working culture is changing and ultimately whether that could lead to a change in Spanish society,

1:25.7

including those long lunches and late evening meals.

1:32.3

We are right now in Sagardi, Barcelona, in the whole part of the city.

1:38.7

You can see here the cave, the mid cave with the old fat cows.

1:43.6

So let's get in to the bar.

...

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