megaspora (english edition) » Spain in GMT+0!

Spain in GMT+0!

By: psr | 2006-07-05

Spain (mainland) uses GMT+1. In summer, local time is GMT+2. This is the same time zone as France, Italy, Germany and the rest of central and eastern Europe.

However, the Iberian peninsula is almost completely within the time zone of GMT+0; that is: the zone centered on longitude 0^o, which covers 7^o 30′ to the west and east. That is, not a single little bit of Spanish territory falls on the GMT+1 zone. The Canary Islands are in GMT+0, as is Portugal, U.K. and Ireland. GMT+0
The whole of Spain ought to be on GMT+0, not just the Canary Islands.

This would result in making better use of natural light, hence better using time, which would positively impact the efficiency of workers and companies. However, the effect on the health of the population would be more important. The human being is made to be awake during the time of natural light, and to rest during the daily period of darkness.

By using GMT+1, the day in Spain is artificially advanced one hour with respect to solar time. Let us suppose the case of someone who wakes up at 7am to go to work at 8am. Effectively, this person is actually waking up at 6am, although at that time there’s still no natural light. There is no reason to artificially introduce this one-hour advancement of the daily
schedule.

Should Spain use GMT+0, 7am would really be 7am, at which time there would already be natural light, and the human body would not have to operate offset from its natural schedule. If Spain would use GMT+0, we’d be with Portugal (which uses the time zone that matches its location on Earth), Italy (which time zone corresponds to its geographic location), and so many
other countries in Europe (and the world).

With this page I hope to convince more people about the fact that Spain is in the wrong time zone, and that it is necessary to change it. Portugal used to use GMT+1 as well, but they were right to do something about it, and change to GMT+0. Spain should follow suit.