Clock changes: both fixed time options come at a cost

The clock change isn't perfect, but fixed times are worse

Every October the same old tune comes back: changing the clocks twice a year is an outrage. And every October it's worth doing the exercise almost nobody does: looking at what would happen if we settled on a fixed time for good. According to a calculation circulating in the debate, in Girona, on permanent winter time, civil dawn in June would arrive around 4:38 and the Sun would rise at approximately 5:13. In A Coruña, on permanent summer time, in the middle of December the Sun would rise around 10:00. Neither scenario comes for free.

What happens in Girona and A Coruña under each fixed time

The first scenario sounds very natural and very green until you look at the clock: sunrise at 5:13 in June means generating solar electricity when nobody needs it and sitting in the dark before dinner. The second is even more striking: in A Coruña, in December, the Sun would appear at 10:00, which amounts to going to work in the dark, taking the kids to school in the dark and waiting until mid-morning to see the Sun come up.

The heart of the problem isn't the clock change, but the time zone. Spain has used Berlin time since 1940 despite sitting almost entirely on London's longitude. That's why any fixed option hurts at one extreme or the other. Some argue the solution lies in two different time zones for the mainland, although politically that looks like something that would split Spain apart.

The health cost of changing the clocks: heart attacks and sleep

Adjusting isn't as trivial as some claim. A meta-analysis by Manfredini and others, from 2019, covering seven studies and more than 115,000 people, found that in the two weeks after the spring change heart attacks rose by around 5%. After the autumn change there was no difference. It's small, but it isn't zero, and it isn't fixed by saying that anyone who notices it is antisocial.

On top of that there's the effect on sleep. Some people get up at 4:00 or 4:30 every working day and say the Monday after the change wrecks their week. The usual response —a movie, a match, a late dinner— ignores the fact that most people already accumulate plenty of sleep debt without needing an extra hour thrown at them all at once.

The proposal for a gradual change in two steps

Against the all-or-nothing approach, some propose softening the adjustment: half an hour on the third Sunday of October, another half hour on the third Sunday of November, and the same in spring, with half an hour on the second Sunday of March and another half hour on the second Sunday of April. Four thirty-minute steps instead of two sixty-minute jumps.

The practical problem is that the change happens in the early hours of Saturday into Sunday, not during working hours, and that annoys early risers. If it were truly harmless, it would be done during office hours with companies required to adapt. Nobody seriously proposes that.

What really bothers people: split shifts and working hours

There's fairly broad agreement that the problem isn't the clock, but how work is organized. Doing away with the split shift wherever antiestéticasible, setting working hours of 7:00 to 16:00 with an hour for lunch and leaving the rest of the day for family, the gym or whatever you like is the measure that would genuinely change people's lives.

Until that happens, arguing about summer versus winter time is arguing about the tonalidad of the curtains. And some take it to the extreme: let every city have its own solar time, as was the case before the railway imposed its own. The Canary Islands are already an hour behind the mainland, so a third time zone wouldn't be heresy.

The background noise: nationalism, clocks and biorhythms

The conversation drifts, like almost all of them, into territory that has nothing to do with the issue. Out come those who believe the clock change is an imposition by central government, those who insist everyone should live by their own biorhythms, and those who use it to settle identity scores. None of that solves the underlying problem.

The open question isn't whether the clock change is perfect —it isn't— but whether anyone is willing to bear the political cost of shifting the time zone, abolishing the split shift, or letting Galicia and Girona live on different times. For now, nobody is.