> 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?