Spain's Time

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Caitlin Dewey, Spaniards Are Less Productive, Constantly Tired Because Spain Is in the Wrong Time Zone. Washington Post, Sept 26, 2013.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/bl ... he-wrong-time-zone/

Quote:

"Spain sits in the middle of the Western European time zone, to which Portugal, Morocco and the UK also belong. But because of a weird twist of history, it actually observes Central European time

"The problem, argues the [new parliamentary] report, is that the Spanish keep working until the natural end of daylight hours, even though they’re going to work an hour earlier, on Central time. In other words, their sleep schedules are synced to the 'artificial' time zone, but their work hours sync up with daylight time. This extra-long workday has given us some fun Spanish cultural quirks, like the 9 pm dinner hour and the two-hour lunch break. * * * (Currently, Spanish primetime stretches until after midnight.)

"Many countries switched to Central Time during World War II to better coordinate their actions on the battlefield, according to El Pais. While most promptly switched back at the end of the war, however, France kept Central time because its eastern edge falls in that zone, and Spain kept Central time out of 'sympathy' for Hitler. Spain, it's worth recalling, did not fight in World War II.

"China has a timezone disparity even more dramatic than Spain’s -- the country physically spans five time zones, but runs entirely on Beijing time.

Note: "Samoa's time zone was out of sync for 119 years at the behest of American traders who thought that would make commerce easier."
(a) Samoa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samoa
(a country encompassing the western part [the eastern part is US territory called American Samoa, which did not change timezone at the end of 2011] of the Samoan Islands in the South Pacific Ocean; independent from New Zealand in 1962;

Quote: "At the end of December 2011, Samoa jumped forward by one day, omitting 30 December from the local calendar, when the nation moved to the west of the International Date Line. This was designed to help the nation boost its economy by doing business with Australia and New Zealand. Before this change, Samoa was 21 hours behind Sydney, but the change means it is now three hours ahead. The previous timezone was agreed on 4 July 1892, to work in line with American traders based in California.

(b) See map 1 in
International Date Line
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Date_Line
(c) Joseph C Finney, The Meaning of the Name Sāmoa. Journal of Polynesian Society, 82: 301-303
http://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/document/Volume_82_1973/Volume_82,_No._3/The_meaning_of_the_name_Samoa,_by_Joseph_C._Finney,_p_301-303/p1
("The people of Sāmoa have no agreed explanation of the meaning of the name of their country")