The latest issue of Monocle magazine includes a report on work hours around the world. It starts off by interviewing one Nuria Chinchilla of IESE Barcelona (where I get sent for re-education from time to time). The segment includes this line (written by the author, Sophie Grove, not la Chinchilla):

It’s 15.00 in Barcelona, the time when every shady bench is taken up by snoozing Catalans.

Upon reading this, my immediate response was: “Well this is utter bollocks, no one in Barcelona still works those hours. So how can I believe Grove when she writes about South Korea?”.

But then I thought to myself: before I write a letter to the editor of Monocle stating the above, maybe I should check with the half-dozen miscreants who prowl these pages looking for a fight. Maybe I’m lucky: I work for a fairly forward-thinking Catalan company which has never had a policy supporting 2 or 3 hour lunchbreaks. But perhaps I’m in the minority. So the question is:

In your Barcelona-based job, are you expected to take a lunch break of more than 1 hour a day?

Additional points awarded to anyone who agrees with me that rather than the hackneyed siesta/lazy Spaniard theme, Grove might have done better to cover the jornada intensiva, which lets me work an extra 45 mins Monday through Thursday so that I can leave at 15.00 on Friday. Comments in general about work hours here, in Catalonia and Spain are always welcome.

As usual, you can vote over there to the right of this post >>>>>