When we get up tomorrow we will have lost an hour of sleep and, what is worse, we will have gained, if not a significant part of the population, a magnificent imbalance in the biological clock, a kind of colossal 'jet lag' without having traveled to New Zealand, or the Caribbean, unless it was in a dream. As if we didn't have enough reasons, with what we carry on our backs, so that our biological rhythms are altered even more, our blood pressure and uric acid skyrocket and our telomeres become raging, all at the same time.
There was a time, before the pandemic, when it seemed that these bewildering time changes were going to be history. It was announced with great fanfare, in March 2019, by the Commission and the European Parliament, when they promised to establish natural time zones on the continent and to end these changes. It was after carrying out a public consultation in which 80% of the 4.6 million participants were in favor of ending this practice. But since it is the Member States who have the last word to decide the time zone they adopt and there is no general consensus, only controversy, we remain the same today. At least until 2026.
Two aspects stand out in the arguments of those who debate this issue. On the one hand, among those who defend these changes is the energy saving derived from a better use of the hours of sun. According to calculations by the Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE), the savings potential would be around 300 million euros, of which close to a third would correspond to domestic households, which represents savings of 6 euros per household, with data from 2015, which indicates the scant interest in tackling the issue once and for all and forever. And this without taking into account that while the matter is delayed, changes in work schedules and citizen uses and customs are evolving and diversifying.
For detractors, the main argument is the effects of these modifications on health. The alterations in the circadian rhythm, the one that people experience throughout the day, conditioned mainly by light and darkness, are suffered by a part of the population, causing above all sleep disturbances, more intense in the change from winter to summer, the next one, than the one that takes place in October. Juan Antonio Madrid, an authority on chronobiology, the science that studies biological rhythms in living beings, has warned of the progressive decline in sleep time: between 60 and 90 minutes a day in the last century and a half. These are the consequences of the current way of life: work and leisure hours, excess light at night, a sedentary lifestyle and the permanent use of screens. And having schedules that differ two hours from solar time in summer and one in winter, so that in general we live late and go to bed too late. For all this, a part of the scientific community proposes to end the time changes and adapt to winter. Others minimize them by considering them temporary alterations that are readjusted in a few days. You will see.
This of the time changes already has its history. The idea would have been suggested for the first time by the scientist Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century. But it would not be until the beginning of the 20th century, first in England and then Germany, in the middle of World War I, that summer time was decreed to save fuel. In Spain, the first precedent is from 1918 when this measure was proposed by means of a royal decree in order to economize on coal consumption. But it was in 1940 when Franco decided to adopt the time of Hitler's Berlin and Mussolini's Rome, advancing the clocks one hour and renouncing the one that corresponded to him due to his geographical situation. Other countries did the same, although after World War II they reversed the measure, but not Spain. The first oil crisis, in 1974, encouraged these time changes to save energy by taking advantage of sunlight. And starting in the eighties, the European Union regulated them through a directive that is renewed every four years. And so until today.
I don't know what your case will be, but according to data from the Spanish Society of Neurology, recently released to coincide with World Sleep Day, almost half of the adult population and a quarter of children do not have quality sleep. If every day when we get up we have to manage a new shock, be it because of the reputable Swiss bank, Putin's latest arrogance, the price of the kilowatt or the penultimate occurrence of Ayuso and his advisers, at least let us sleep peacefully. Candidates and candidates, get wet now that we are already campaigning and proclaim an independent republic, or whatever, without time changes, that Europe will not fix it for us. The outraged will thank you.
