The organization of time for eating: A sociological contribution to the debate on the Europeanization of schedules in Spain

There is recurrent social and political debate in Spain about the need to modify working hours to facilitate balancing work and personal life; however, time schedules have proved to be resilient. Spanish working hours are distinctive because of a late and long lunch break, a late hour for finishing work, and late dinner hours, making Spain an anomaly in Europe, with long working hours split in the middle. This debate is of interest in terms of the sociology of time, in analyzing how the rhythms of a society are created and maintained, and in terms of the sociology of food, providing data and research to explain people's resistance to change. The lunch and dinner schedule in Spain forms a routine underlying other practices and a structural support for their interrelations, so a change would mean a cultural rupture that Spanish society does not seem to be willing to accept.