Pay attention. It arrives this weekend. Summer time ends and winter time begins. The second time change in Spain in 2023 takes place in the early hours of this Saturday, October 28, to Sunday, October 29.
Although most of the clocks around us, such as those on mobile phones, are digital and adjust automatically, there is always one that needs to be manipulated manually, whether it is an old wrist or wall clock, an analog alarm clock or the car clock.
In this way, this weekend the clocks will have to be turned back 60 minutes so that at 03:00 in the morning it will be 02:00 again. “At three it will be two o’clock,” as is customary to repeat.
Turning the clock back or forward in the early hours of this Saturday to Sunday may not be the only doubt generated by the time change:
The answer depends on what time we go to bed, of course. But yes, on Sunday there will be 25 hours so anyone who wants can enjoy one more hour in bed.
With the time change, winter time begins and it dawns earlier, yes. In fact, this is one of the main reasons for the time change: to take advantage of sunlight and consume less electricity.
During winter time, in Spain the sun rises between 8:00 and 8:30 a.m. while the sun sets between 5:30 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. Both cases taking Madrid time as reference.
If we maintained daylight saving time during these months, sunrise would be delayed and would dawn between 9:00 and 9:30 a.m. while it would set at night between 6:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
No. In the month of March, when we enter daylight saving time, the clocks move forward one hour.
But don’t they say that turning clocks forward and back is going to end? Let’s see. The European Commission announced in 2019 its intention to put an end to the changes definitively, given the little economic impact it has today with modern technology. And each European country should choose which time it prefers for the entire year.
The European Parliament chose 2021 as the time when the new regulations would come into force, but since then the debate has been paralyzed by the health crisis of the pandemic or the current war in Ukraine.
In the absence of progress in this regard at the European level, the Ministry of the Presidency published last year in the BOE an official calendar with the start and end of summer time from 2022 to 2026. For now, we will continue to move the hands back and forth. watch twice a year.
Increase in traffic and work accidents, learning difficulties, less concentration or insomnia problems are some of the disorders that the change to winter time can cause and that can last up to two weeks, according to experts.
“Sudden changes in schedules cause our neurohormonal system, cortisol, melatonin, serotonin, cholesterol, which has its own biological circle, to become noticeably imbalanced,” the coordinator of the Sleep and Chronobiology Group of the Association tells Efe. Spanish Department of Pediatrics (AEP), Gonzalo Pin.
For his part, the vice president of the Spanish Society of Neurology, Jesús Porta, explains that people have two cycles that control sleep, an internal cycle – which sets the rhythms – and another controlled by the release of melatonin.
Children and the elderly are the most affected by the effects of the time change.
