The Spanish Siesta Explained

Let’s talk about the Spanish siesta, how it works and why, and whether or not Spaniards have a nap every single day.

As you might expect, our stereotypes about the Spanish siesta have some truth to them, but they also drastically oversimplify and skew the reality, which tends to be complex and nuanced.

Here are some broad conclusions I’ve come to regarding the Spanish siesta:

  • the siesta is visible both in business and in personal life,
  • it’s a period of rest from around 2pm to 5pm, perhaps longer in the hottest regions,
  • the Spanish don’t uphold the siesta out of laziness but out of necessity,
  • in summer and in hot regions it is particularly important,
  • the siesta period, even in cool seasons and cool areas of the country, is a well-defined period of the day regardless of the weather,
  • many people sleep during the siesta, but many don’t.

Let me elaborate on this.

The most likely context in which the whole family will observe the siesta is in summer, in a hot, rural village when everyone is on holiday. It’s uncomfortable and even dangerous to leave the house in the early afternoon. Businesses close. Nobody is in the streets. Everything takes place at night. Enter a house in such a village at that time of day, and you’ll likely find it dark and quiet, as though everyone had been on the nightshift.

The most unlikely context in which a family will observe a siesta is in a cool region in winter time, when the kids are at school and the parents are at work far from the family home. It’s unlikely that any of them will manage to have a nap, let alone all of them.

Most likely, the kids and adults will have two hours of break each, and they’ll spend it with friends and colleagues. The siesta exists in the sense that there is a long break in the afternoon, but there’s no sleeping involved.

This ritual of a two or three-hour afternoon break is slowly disappearing as the timetable becomes synched with the rest of Europe, but for a long time it has been the tradition in Spain. You work or study from 9 until 2, then from 5 to 8. If you can’t go home to have lunch and get some shut-eye, tough titty!

Between the two extremes above, there is an entire world of combinations. By and large, the more free time you have, the hotter the weather, and the more rural you go, the more likely it is that the siesta means a mass shutdown and the more likely you’ll be to sleep during siesta time.

I think that clears up the common stereotypes we have about the siesta and brings a more nuanced view of this crucial time of the day.

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