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Spain’s Labour Minister calls time on ‘mad’ late-night dining

Spain's Labour Minister Yolanda Díaz has angered hospitality groups and political opponents by criticising how restaurants stay open until 1am or later, something that goes directly against the late eating culture so common in the country.

Published: 5 March 2024 13:08 CET
Spain's Labour Minister calls time on 'mad' late-night dining
A restaurant in Madrid closes up for the night. It's common for restaurants in Spain to stay open until after midnight, especially at weekends. Photo: Oscar del Pozo/AFP

Spain’s Minister of Labour and Social Economy, Yolanda Díaz, has outraged sections of the Spanish hospitality sector and her political opponents by claiming that restaurants staying open beyond midnight in Spain is “madness”.

The comments contradict long-held cultural norms in Spain about going out and eating late at night.

In Spain, eating lunch at 2pm or 3pm and then having dinner at 9pm or 10pm, meaning you might stay out until beyond midnight, is extremely common, especially at weekends.

READ ALSO: The Spanish cultural quirks you only notice once you live in Spain

Speaking at a Sumar parliamentary group meeting in Congress on Monday, Díaz claimed that “it is unreasonable for a country to have its restaurants still open at one o’clock in the morning,” comparing the Spanish culture of late-night nightlife to other European countries, where she claims restaurants close earlier.

“The difference with the rest of Europe is crazy,” the hard-left politician said.

“We can’t expect to keep extending the timetables until we don’t know what time.”

Díaz, who is also a second Deputy Prime Minister, made the comments during wider discussion of Spain’s working week, and forms part of broader reforms her ministry are implementing to cut down on working hours and improve work-life balance and overall productivity in Spain.

In January the Ministry announced it would cut the average working week to 37.5 hours from 40 by 2025.

The policy will see a progressive drop in weekly work hours of 1.5 hours in 2024 (to 38.5 hours) and of 2.5 hours in 2025.

READ ALSO: Spain set to slash work week to 37.5 hours

The reduction in working hours, Díaz says, can help to “structure” Spanish society, but for it to be effective she suggests Spain must reconsider some of its long-held timekeeping quirks and somewhat unique cultural timetables.

Díaz considers late-night restaurants unreasonable and contrary to this long-term aim. As Labour Minister, Díaz also has concerns about working conditions for hospitality professionals who work long, unsociable hours.

The Minister also claimed that her department has met with major employers’ associations from the tourism and hospitality sectors to highlight Spain’s differences with the rest of Europe.

However, Díaz’s comments on restaurants closing late have not gone down well with the sector. The employers’ association España de Noche responded that “it makes no sense” to focus on the nightlife, tourism and hospitality industries “without taking a sociological and in-depth approach to the timetables in Spanish society.”

READ ALSO: 17 ways your eating and drinking habits change when you live in Spain

“The [nightlife] offer and activity is one of the pillars of Spain being the first country in the world in holiday tourism, so any experiment endangers our lifestyle model, our tourist attractiveness and the activity of companies in the sector,” the association said.

Díaz’s comments also provoked a reaction from the populist right-wing regional president of Madrid, Isabel Ayuso, a leader who won a large majority in the regional election on the back of reopening bars and restaurants in Madrid during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We are different. Spain has the best nightlife in the world, with streets full of life and freedom. And that also provides employment. They want us to be puritanical, materialistic, socialist, soulless, without light and without restaurants because they feel like it. Bored and at home,” Ayuso said on her Twitter/X account.

Díaz has since responded to Ayuso’s comments by saying she shouldn’t treat the subject so lightly and that working late into the night can result in mental health risks.

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FOOD AND DRINK

‘Stress test’: Olive oil producers adapt to climate change

Olive oil producers are improving irrigation and seeking new varieties of olives to safeguard production as climate change upends harvests, causing prices of the staple of the Mediterranean diet to soar.

Published: 27 June 2024 16:58 CEST
'Stress test': Olive oil producers adapt to climate change

“Climate change is already a reality and we need to adapt to it,” according to the executive director of the International Olive Council (IOC) Jaime Lillo.

He spoke at the opening of the three-day olive oil congress in Madrid which brings together 300 participants from around the globe.

The gathering came as the world’s top olive oil producers, including Spain, Italy and Greece, have recorded an unprecedented drop in production over the past two years due to extreme drought and repeated heatwaves.

Global production of olive oil fell from 3.42 million tonnes in the 2021-2022 season to 2.57 million tonnes in 2022-2023, IOC figures show.

And according to data supplied by the organisation’s 37 member states, it is set to fall again in 2023-2024 to 2.41 million tonnes.

This has caused prices to soar by between 50 percent and 70 percent over the past year, depending on the variety concerned.

Prices in Spain, which supplies around half of the world’s olive oil, have tripled since 2021, to the dismay of consumers.

READ ALSO: Spain to eliminate tax on olive oil to ease price jump

‘Complex scenarios’

Olive oil has been an essential part of the Mediterranean diet for thousands of years. Spaniards for instance use it to cook and to season fish, salads, vegetables and other dishes.

“The rise in prices has been a particularly demanding stress test for our sector. We have never experienced anything like this before,” said Pedro Barato, the head of the Spanish Olive Oil Interprofessional Organisation.

“We have to prepare ourselves for increasingly complex scenarios that will allow us to face up to the climate crisis,” he added, likening the “turbulence” faced by olive producers to that experienced by the banking sector during the 2008 financial crisis.

The outlook is not encouraging.

Over 90 percent of the world’s olive oil production comes from the Mediterranean basin.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said this region is warming 20-percent faster than the global average.

This situation could affect world production in the long term.

“We are facing a delicate situation” which implies “changing the way we treat trees and soil”, said Georgios Koubouris, a researcher at the Greek Olive Institute.

“The olive tree is one of the plants best adapted to a dry climate. But in an extreme drought, it activates mechanisms to protect itself and no longer produce anything. To grow olives, you need a minimum amount of water,” said Lillo.

‘Find solutions’

Among the possible solutions raised at the Madrid congress is genetic research.

In recent years hundreds of varieties of olive trees have been tested to identify the species best adapted to higher temperatures.

The goal is to find “varieties that need fewer hours of cold in winter and that are more resistant to stress caused by lack of water at certain key times” of the year, such as spring, said Juan Antonio Polo, head of technology at the IOC.

The sector is also looking to improve water use by storing rainwater, recycling wastewater and employing technology to use less water to irrigate trees.

This means abandoning “surface irrigation” and instead using “drip systems” which bring water “directly to the roots of the trees” to avoid water loss, said Kostas Chartzoulakis of the Greek Olive Institute.

Farmers are abandoning production in certain areas that could become unsuitable for olive trees because they are too dry and moving them to other regions.

There has been a rise in new olive tree plantations, although on a small scale, in regions previously not used to grow the crop, said Lillo, adding that he was “optimistic” about the future.

“With international cooperation, we will gradually find solutions,” he said.

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