Adios, siesta

It is with a hard head but a heavy heart that I relay this Financial Times report from Leslie Crawford: Spain?s Socialist government on Tuesday officially abolished the siesta, the extended lunch break. A new law decrees that lunch breaks will be limited to one hour to allow civil servants to clock off at 6pm. Jordi Sevilla, minister for public administration and a father of three, said the aims of the law were to put an end to the ?chaotic hours? worked in the civil service and allow Spaniards to reconcile work and family life. He said he hoped private sector companies would follow suit. ?We are trying to set an example by rationalising the working hours of civil servants,? he said. ?Henceforth, lunchtime will be from 12 to 1pm, like the rest of Europe, instead of between 2 and 4pm. This will allow civil servants to leave work at six, instead of eight or nine in the evening.? Mr Sevilla said he wanted civil servants to ?achieve the same amount of work in less time?. The C?rculo de Empresarios, a business lobby group, said it thought Spain?s long lunches were an inefficient way to break up the day. ?This is costing the economy as much as 8 per cent of gross domestic product,? said Claudio Boada, its president. Spain ranks 10th in the number of hours worked per year, although productivity lags far behind countries that work fewer hours.... Still, change will not be easy. ?The lunch is the main way personal relationships are established,? says Alejandra Moore, a communications consultant. ?I cannot imagine achieving anything meaningful over a 45-minute lunch.? While I suspect the 8% figure is an exaggeration, it seems hard to dispute the notion that the siesta is a thoroughly inefficient way of inserting break times into the working day. So the economist in me accepts this as wise policy. At the same time, the Burkean conservative in me mourns a loss. The siesta is such a lovely conceit for lazy people like myself -- who have a strong belief in the restorative and stimulating powers of the long lunch -- that it will be hard to imagine its disappearance from its country of origin. UPDATE: Tyler Cowen has more on the economics of napping.