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ลำดับตอนที่ #92 : The end of the Spanish siesta?
"In
my house we would be totally in favour of changing the schedules. My kids virtually never see their
father during the week," says Cristina Matarranz from Madrid, who is on
her own with her three-year-old girl and seven-year-old boy after she finishes
work in a bank at 3pm and picks them up from school.
The
medical supplies company where her partner works insists on employees working
from 9am in the morning to 7pm at night - the classic Spanish office timetable
which includes a two-hour lunch break from 2pm to 4pm.
As
it takes him an hour to travel between home and the office, he doesn't have
time to enjoy the once-traditional home-cooked meal and a nap at lunchtime -
and he only gets home at 8pm, Matarranz says.
"Very
rarely do they let him work from home. People at school don't believe our
children has a father - he has never picked them up or attended any
events."
In
a country where unemployment stands at 21%, it can be hard to ask for
concessions from an employer, which is why campaigners such as Jose Luis Casero
want incentives to
be introduced to make companies change their hours.
"People want to
work but they also want a life," says Casero, president of the National
Commission for the Rationalisation of Spanish Schedules.
He
thinks employers who introduce flexitime and home-working should be rewarded
with tax breaks - and he wants the government to provide more nursery places,
and to open schools earlier in the morning.
The
reason Spain has a low birth rate of 1.32 children per woman, compared to 1.58
for the whole of the European Union, is partly to do with the state of the
economy, he argues, but also "because people are tired even when it comes
to human relationships".
Carolina
Dobrzynki Kearney, a Madrid-based single mother who works in marketing says
half her day is wasted because clients are unavailable for long periods.
"I
could get my work done in six hours but I need people to take my calls,"
she says.
"Until
10 in the morning no-one will answer, and then again from about 1.30 or 2pm
it's impossible. So I find myself setting up conversations with people between
six and eight in the evening when I would much rather be in the park with my
daughter."
It's a constant
battle to defend her family space, she says.
"As
individuals we have to try to make a point of saying no to work-related tasks
during family time, but you get looked down on for doing that.
"People
in Spain are fixed in their ways like cogs on a wheel. They complain about their
schedules, but that's all. Someone is going to have to make this change
happen."
One
idea put forward by Rajoy is to turn Spanish clocks back one hour from Central
European Time, and to align
the country with the UK and Ireland. This would in fact be a return to the
status quo before 1942 when the country's dictator, Francisco Franco, moved the
clocks forward as a
gesture of allegiance to Hitler.
Jose
Luis Casero blames the "abnormal" use of Central European Time for a
late-hours culture in which prime-time TV runs from 10pm until midnight.
"Spain needs to
use the time zone it is in," he says. "The Greenwich Meridian passes
through Zaragoza."
But
it's the end of evening work that would represent the biggest change for most
families.
For
many years Consuelo Torres's job with a multinational telecommunications firm
kept her in the office until 7pm, obliging her to drive around during her unwanted two-hour lunch
break to deposit
her four children with carers for the evening.
Recently
she took action to change this, knocking an hour off her daily schedule and
cutting the lunch break altogether.
"I've been
running around like a fool for years. By law, if you have a child in primary
school, you can demand a shorter working day," she says
Now Torres works for
seven straight hours from 9am to 4pm and goes home with her children after
school.
"I don't even
lose money due to the saving in petrol and the fact that I have dropped a tax bracket," she says.
"A lot of people don't do it because they fear reprisals from the company. But there is a
growing social clamour
for change now."
Some Spanish
residents, such as Penny Thompson, a British media professional and entrepreneur, fear the
country could lose some of its charm, however, if it banishes the concept of the siesta period
altogether.
"To have a bit of
a break after lunch is reasonable given the hot weather you get here from this
time of year to October," says Thompson, who has lived near Malaga for the
past decade.
"Most families
like to have a family meal in the evening. Because of the heat, they're not
going to have it in the early evening.
"And at lunchtime
too, there is a focus on proper cooking with fresh ingredients here. That food
takes time. If you're going to do that for a family meal, you might like a
little rest afterwards."
The body's natural timetable
Modern life can ride roughshod over our
internal clock. We want to believe we can do whatever we want at any hour of
the day or night if we need to, be it having dinner at 11pm, or flying to New
York at 4am, with no ill-effects. However, millions of years of evolution have
given our bodies a finely-tuned internal clock.
tormented
(n.)
great mental suffering and unhappiness,
or great physicalpain:
virtually
(adv.) almost:
using a computer to do or see something instead of going to a place or talking to a person:
incentives
(n.)
something that encourages a person to do something:
cogs on
a wheel
Someone or something that is functionally necessary but of small significance or importance within a larger operationor organization
align (v.)
to put two or more things into a straight line:
allegiance
(n.)
loyalty and support for a ruler,
country,
group,
or belief:
Obliging
(Adj.)
deposit (v.)
to leave something somewhere:
to put something valuable,
especially money, in a bank orsafe (= strong box or cupboard with
locks
to pay someone an amount of money when you make
an agreement with
that person to
pay for or buy something, that
either will be returned to
you later,
if the agreed arrangementis
kept, or that forms part of the total payment:
bracket (n.)
either of two symbols put around a word, phrase, or sentence in a piece of writing to show that what is between them should be considered as separate from the main part:
a group with fixed upper and lower limits:
(v.) If you bracket two or more
things or people,
you considerthem
to be similar or connected to each other:
reprisals (n.)
(an example of) activity against another person, especially as a punishment by military forces or a political group:
clamour (v.)
to make a loud complaint or demand:
entrepreneur(n.)
someone who starts their own business, especially when this involves seeing a new opportunity:
banishes (v.)
to get rid of something completely:
to send someone away, especially from
their country,
and not allow them
to come
run
roughshod oversomeone
(also ride
roughshod over someone)
› to act without caring how you will affect someone or
something
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