Perhaps that was more of a culture coping mechanism?

With an unemployment rate of a staggering 50% for those under 25, and with 68% of them leaving Spain to find work, and 12% overall unemployment for everyone else: that sounds like a lot of people that don't even have a job.

That's not a good thing, perhaps the attitude of work to live, as said previously, is more of a coping mechanism. Otherwise, maybe this is at the core of their unemployment problems? The more I read about their labor laws, it just sounds bad in Spain. And the youth unemployment problem sounds like a disaster in the making.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008–13_Spanish_financial_crisi...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008–13_Spanish_financial_crisi...

> Perhaps that was more of a culture coping mechanism?

If it's a new thing, it's a coping mechanism. (I'm pretty sure it's not)

more likely it's the opposite, the reason for the unemployment rates and poor GDP is because of this attitude to work. Its like trying find a ton of explanations for something when the big pink elephant in the room is being ignored. Ever since the British defeated their "invincible" Armada Spain has tried to compete with the rest of Europe and struggled, culminating with the current financial crisis. The time zone nonsense has nothing to do with it.

Compare the UK manufacturing sector to the Spanish. The only reason that we are not (yet) in much worse straights than Spain and Italy is because we are the place to route the money through.

On paper the UK has the worst economic exposure in the OECD and produces very little indeed.

We are little more than a service economy for banking at this point, and UK banking has the lion's share of our total debt, dwarfing what is owed by the public sector. Luckily we are considered the stable place, so people continue to put their money here, but I suspect that is more of a confidence trick than anything else.

So the roots of the current real state bust may be found in the invincible Armada in the 1600s(BTW nobody in Spain put it that name, and that episode wasn't the end of the war, which didn't end so badly to Spain). Yeah, great analysis, thank you. Trafalgar didn't appeal to you?

The reasons of Spanish underdevelopment during the past centuries are several and have been studied thoroughly and have nothing to do with "being lazy" as you seem to suggest.

I detest how every news that involves Spain is linked to the current crisis. Just 5 years ago Spain was a model of economic growth and progress and we lived at the same Time Zone.

> the reason for the unemployment rates and poor GDP is because of this attitude to work.

And exactly what attitude to work have Spaniards?

Yet nobody I know in Spain likes the compulsory 2 hour lunch breaks.

Few places do this anymore, it's more common in the south which is insanely hot at mid day

In my experience it is quite normal in Madrid, which does get blazingly hot in the summer but is pretty okay the rest of the year.

Depends on what you're looking at. If it's public-facing, then, yes, but only because demand at those times is very low.

Otherwise, for office work, lunch breaks are short. European style.

It is a serious burden if you work in an office which is air conditioned anyway. The most serious problem being that the long (and it was generally 3 hours in the south where I was staying) break is intended for sleeping.

Problem is, most people now don't live 5 minutes walk from their place of work, so there isn't time to get home and sleep before returning to the office. But there is nothing else to do. Everyone else is on the same break. You can't run your errands for the day because everywhere else is shut as well.

As a student living 5 minutes from my classes, I found the dual sleep (usually about 4am til 8am and 1pm til 3pm) with the main meal in the middle of the day to be fantastic, but for modern working conditions and commuters it is a serious problem.

When I entered Barcelona, my heart stayed there. Absolutely stunning city. Not to mention nearly every woman is a 9/10. I remember walking down the beach and joining a drum circle, started playing guitar with them. Someone passes me a joint, the cops roll by, and I tried to play it cool by putting it out and walking really fast away from the circle. I realized nobody was with me, I look back, cops talking to everyone, laughing, asking how their night is. I walked back like an idiot, the cop laughed at me and told me to take a seat, then they just strolled along. Such a small event felt so surreal.

I unexpectedly stumbled upon Mercè this year, and it was a magical experience (I even have a burn from the correfoc to show for it). Barcelona was definitely my favorite of the several European cities I visited during a trip across Europe this past month.