Hard to digest: Spain’s long lunch under threat

Associated Press

MADRID

Day after day, Spanish chef Jesus Lopez serves up treats such as a steaming stew of red beans with spicy chorizo sausage and bacon chunks. And that’s just the first course. Next comes hake au gratin on a bed of spinach, and cream-stuffed puff pastry for dessert.

Lopez owns a small, upscale place catering to business people who eat the old-fashioned Spanish way and often come to negotiate or celebrate deals. They punctuate work with a break of two hours or more for a hearty meal — the rest of the workday be damned. But many now wonder if struggling Spain can continue to afford a tradition that — for some — borders on sacred.

“It is quintessentially Spanish,” said Lopez, a friendly, thoughtful man of 48. “The problem is that there are fewer things to celebrate these days.”

Indeed, as Europe’s economic crisis bites hard, the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy is saddled with its own myriad woes, and low productivity resulting from long workdays is one of them. It is groping for ways to reinvent itself after a housing bubble that largely fueled the economy went bust three years ago. Unemployment stands at 21.5 percent. Debt is piling up everywhere.

One thing that would help is to scrap the traditional productivity-sucking black hole at midday, say economists and advocates of a more American-style 9-to-5 schedule.

These reform-seekers say people would be more rested and motivated, and thus perform better, if they could clock out earlier and get home to do things such as exercise or raise their kids in person.

More and more companies are at least taking notice of these benefits and considering a switch, but old habits and mind-sets — such as the idea that working long evening hours scores bonus points with the boss — take time to change, these advocates say.

Even the federation representing Spain’s small- and medium-size companies — which represent more than 90 percent of Spain’s businesses — says canning the long split shift is worth considering.

“We want to avoid excessive workdays that contribute nothing to productivity,” said Teresa Diaz de Teran, head of CEPYME’s labor relations department. “We see this as an issue to study, an area where there is room for improvement.”

Before the recent general election, the private Association for the Rationalization of Spanish Schedules, a lobby group pushing for Spain to make better use of its time, both work and leisure, contacted all the major candidates for prime minister to back their call.

Antonio Camunas, a business consultant who runs a company called Global Strategies, puts it bluntly: “In Spain, a tremendous amount of time is wasted. No doubt about it.”

Of the 17 nations that share the euro, Spain is 10th in productivity per hour worked, according to Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical agency.

There is no Spanish law that mandates workers get two hours for their midday meal, a pause traditionally associated with the siesta (although these days such a snooze is just a dream for most big city Spaniards because of long commutes that make it impractical to go home for lunch.) Rather, the length of lunch breaks is negotiated by unions and companies.

Decades ago, Spaniards did in fact eat lunch earlier, in sync with the rest of Europe. But after the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 — and the ruinous period of hunger and other hardship that ensued — people often needed two jobs to support their families, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Thus, a later and longer lunch break and rest time, and the birth of a custom.

These days, the Labor Ministry said the National Statistics Institute say they have no firm figures on how many workers have what kind of break at midday.

Certainly, some facilities such as factories and assembly lines cannot shut down for two hours at lunchtime. Places with lots of staff such as department stores and shopping malls also stay open through midday. And the central government in 2005 tried to set an example for the rest of the country by mandating that all ministries shut by 6 p.m.

But economists say 9-to-5 or early-riser flex-time shifts remain the exception among Spanish companies that have a choice, even as long lunches that were the norm in other European countries such as Italy and Portugal disappear. Ditto for major Latin American cities such as Buenos Aires, Bogota or Lima, where Spanish custom once held sway.

Camunas, the consultant, switched part of his staff to a more-condensed workday last year and says it is going fine. This kind of change, he insists, will be the way of the future as Spain joins the rest of Europe in trying harder to help people juggle family and career.