On Sunday, October 27th, the clocks will change to winter time and 3am will become 2am, gaining one hour.
The 20th century: the moment of the time change in Spain
The history of how Spain began to set a different schedule in winter and summer is long and discontinuous. It begins at the beginning of the 20th century. At that time, Spain had many different time zones, which caused time differences of up to 42 minutes between the different geographical zones.
The arrival of the railway at the end of the 19th century changed everything. The population began to become obsessed with the time. There was a need to know the exact minute. It was in July 1900 when Queen María Cristina of Habsburg-Lorraine put an end to the problem by signing a decree that unified the time throughout Spain.
In 1918, summer time was established for the first time in Spain due to energy shortages. However, the wars of the 20th century prevented this time change from being made a common gesture. Furthermore, during the years of the Civil War in Spain there were two time zones, that of the national side and that of the republican side. At the end of the war, Franco adopted German time to be closer to Hitler, but the change did not become effective until 1973.
**The Spanish wanted to end the time change but talks on the subject seem to have faded since the Covid epidemic. 64% of voters want to put an end to this practice and of them, 59.4% wanted it to be established last year in 2022.
