24 MARCH13, 2022
life for decades.” A decade later, the siesta persisted as a sacred
afternoon ritual. In 2015, it was big news when the mayor of a
village near Valencia issued an official edict that all shops, offices
and bars must be closed, and residents must not make any noise,
from 2 to 5 p.m., to “guarantee everybody’s rest and thus better deal
with the rigors of the summer.”
Still, speculation over the siesta’s fate continued. In 2016, when
Spain’s prime minister tried to stop the workday at 6 p.m., the BBC
asked, “The end of the Spanish siesta?” The news outlet doubled
down a year later, declaring, “It’s time to put the tired Spanish siesta
stereotype to bed.” A year before the pandemic, the Guardian
dissected the issue (“Siesta no more? Why Spanish sleeping habits
are under strain”). The newspaper spoke to a man who was
president of a group called the National Commission for the
Rationalization of Spanish Schedules, which campaigned to end
the split working day and revert to Greenwich Mean Time.
Apparently, in a quirk of history, Spain remains in the “wrong” time
zone, dating to when the fascist dictator Gen. Francisco Franco
moved the nation’s clocks forward an hour in solidarity with Nazi
Germany during World War II. Which is why the Spanish sun
doesn’t set until nearly 10 p.m. in midsummer.
Yet in 2021, if the siesta was supposedly dying, I saw little
evidence. Shops and businesses shut down at 2 p.m. and reopened
at 4, just like always. Some Spanish friends told me that, if anything,
These pages from
left: A rooftop bar in
Madrid. François
Monti, a friend of the
author’s, at Casa
Parrondo, a bar in
Madrid. Previous
pages: Plaza de la
Constitución in San
Sebastián, along
Spain’s Basque
coast.
I
t was a strange siesta. After a late lunch of black olives, jamón
Iberico, manchego cheese and a half bottle of the local red in the hot
July sun, I’d nodded off on the balcony of the apartment I was
renting, which overlooked the town square of Haro, in the heart of
northern Spain’s La Rioja region. Thumping electronic music and
someone shouting into a microphone startled me awake. In my fog
of slumber, the pulsing music sounded like a siren, the urgent voice
calling people to action. It alarmed me. What could be happening?
Certainly, the coronavirus’s delta variant had been ravaging Spain
at that moment, but I was unaware of any civil unrest.
As I gained my senses, I peered over the balcony. It was just a few
dozen people in workout clothes, pedaling stationary bikes in front
of the town hall, while Peloton instructors loudly encouraged them
to pedal faster. All around them in the square, other residents of
Haro, with face masks under their chins, calmly nibbled their tapas
and sipped their wine at crowded bars and cafes. Others, properly
masked, strolled the square as masked kids ran around and kicked
soccer balls. It was 7 p.m., and the sun was still bright and warm.
I felt silly, but this was my fifth day of isolation after testing
positive for the coronavirus, and my brain was running wild with
crazy scenarios. After nearly two glorious Spanish weeks, I’d had
to get a coronavirus test in the days before my flight home. The
idea of becoming infected after vaccination was new and unclear,
and so I was floored when the nurse at the clinic where I tested
showed me that I was positive. Since my trip had to be extended, I
rented an Airbnb and was now having an isolated siesta by myself
for days on end.
I’d had only very mild symptoms. Then, on Day 2, I bit into the
jamón and couldn’t taste it. I swirled and sniffed my wine and
realized I couldn’t smell it. All my senses returned perfectly fine by
Day 3, but during those 24 hours I had composed an entire book in
my mind about the food and wine writer who’d lost his ability to
taste or smell.
This trip in July was my first since the pandemic had begun.
When the European Union opened its doors to fully vaccinated
Americans in late June 2021, I caught the first flight I could. When
I had originally planned this trip two years ago, my idea was to write
about the state of the Spanish siesta. Like many outsiders, I’ve
always been fascinated by the daily schedule in Spain: work from
9 a.m. to 2 p.m., complete shutdown of work for at least two hours,
work again from 4 p.m. to about 8, dinner no earlier than 10, bed
after midnight, repeat.
Pundits had been declaring the death of the siesta for more than
20 years. At the start of 2006, the New York Times, reporting that
Spain’s central government ended the two- to three-hour midday
break for its workers (“For many in Spain, siesta ends”), declared:
“they will be forced to abandon a tradition that has typified Spanish
