Spanish Siesta Takes a Nap

In one of many efforts considered in dealing with crippling debt and high unemployment (how high is Spain's unemployment rate?), Spain may reportedly work to end its time-honored tradition of long afternoon naps known as siestas.

(http://specials.msn.com/a-list/lifestyle/spanish-siesta-popular-pages)

The aged custom is coming to an end in Spain. The hotter climate of the Andalusian plain all the way to the coasts of Galicia had prospered a culture of rest and relaxation during the hottest, early afternoon hours of the day.

This custom has caused a country wealthy in natural resources to stagnate more than nations whose people were willing to wake up earlier and go to bed at set times.

David Landes, in his work The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, recorded that a topography of fresh summers and tolerable winters exists in a considerably narrow latitude around the global. From France all the way to Great Britain, tracing the latitudinal lines across the globe, the lands and nations within that climate sector were the most conducive to the innovations of the industrial revolution.

Countries which endured a harsh and heated climate, or those nations which endured longer and more penetrating winters, needed the technological innovations which Western European countries, and China, were already able to create without much fuss or resistance from a harsh and forbidding environment.

Economic geography can never imply or support the notion of economic determinism, of course, but a climate that works against man certainly does not assist him with achieving certain economic innovations.

Now Spain, already facing a more determined and energetic schedule since entering the European Union, now must step out of the older habits of doing nothing during certain hours of the day and start getting to bed a little bit earlier. The change in rest should not eliminate rest altogether, but the time and the duration of rest needs to moderate more with the tempo of the post-industrialized world if Spain wants to recovery and regain competitiveness in a global market.