Once I first moved to Spain final summer time, I felt surprisingly disorientated. I might hardly blame tradition shock — I’d been visiting the nation for years earlier than I moved to Madrid. I communicate Spanish. I’ve Spanish household. However I’d by no means lived right here, and one thing was misplaced. Then an opportunity remark from a buddy crystallised the issue. “The factor is that in Spain you don’t have any phrase for the afternoon,” she stated. And she or he was proper.

I do know the net dictionaries will inform you in any other case — that the afternoon interprets into “la tarde” in Spanish. Nevertheless it’s extra sophisticated than that. The tarde is just not a neatly outlined phrase that covers a discrete phase of the day earlier than night. As a result of what’s the phrase for night in Spain? It’s “la tarde” too.

Sure, slippery however hegemonic, the tarde reigns over all of it, an amorphous idea that spans a piece of the day so giant that different languages want two phrases for it. The tarde resists management, and there’s no social consensus on what it means. Spanish individuals themselves can’t agree when it begins or ends. “In that sense there’s a chaos in Spanish life,” says Fernando Vilches, a linguist at Rey Juan Carlos college. I feel we can provide my affliction a reputation: scheduling shock.

Spaniards divide the day by completely different parameters. Those I’ll name clockists, typically kids who’ve lived overseas, assume when it comes to hours. However which hours? Nobody agrees with me that the tarde begins at noon. A authorities minister instructed me he greets individuals with “buenas tardes” if he begins a speech at 12.30pm. “But when it’s 12pm and also you say that individuals offer you a humorous look.” A number of clockists say the tarde begins at 2pm. However there’s a 4pm faction too.

Then there are the foodists, who carve up the day not by hours however by meals, which in Spain are sometimes lengthy, late and splendidly convivial. For many who say the tarde doesn’t start till you’ve began lunch, that may imply half-past two, three and even later. However for a lot of older individuals it doesn’t start till you’ve completed consuming, which will get you past 4pm and even 5pm.

An enormous lunch with shoppers can begin with beer, spiral by wine, and finish with a shot of pacharán, adopted by a gin and tonic within the bar subsequent door. “Then it’s again to work at 6pm,” says Vilches. “You do this to a poor American and he’s drunk, sleepy and desires to go residence. So we’ve got to vary issues a bit.” And certainly change has begun: a variety of firms have dropped the usual two-hour lunch break so individuals can get residence earlier to their households.

Spain’s famed post-lunch siesta can be not as widespread as you’d assume. The one individuals I do know who’ve common weekday naps are in nursery or retirement. One is my relative Marcelino, 70, who says the tarde doesn’t start till he wakes up at round 7pm. However extra individuals nap in the summertime, because the blistering warmth makes it exhausting to do something with out aircon. When an enormous a part of the day is a write-off, maybe you don’t want phrases for afternoon and night.

By 9pm the early birds are beginning dinner. However 9 to 10 is a gray zone the place greeting anybody with “buenas noches” slightly than “buenas tardes” can elicit a type of humorous appears. At weekends there are nonetheless children within the playgrounds at 10.30pm. You may make restaurant reservations at 1 / 4 to midnight.

Daniel Gabaldón, a sociologist on the College of Valencia, says that is all related to a different curiosity: mainland Spain is within the unsuitable timezone. If its clocks had been set in accordance with the place of the solar, it could be on the identical time because the UK and Portugal. However as a substitute it’s one hour forward, as a result of within the Forties the dictatorship of Francisco Franco determined Spain must be aligned with Nazi Germany. For half the 12 months, Spain units its clocks to photo voltaic time on the German-Polish border. When it adjusts for daylight saving, it matches photo voltaic time in the midst of Ukraine.

Having lunch at 2.30pm in Spain signifies that, in accordance with photo voltaic time, you’re actually consuming at about 1.30pm (within the winter) or 12.30pm (in the summertime). For official time and pure time to be so out of whack is unhealthy, says Nuria Chinchilla of Iese Enterprise College. “We’ve got fixed jet lag.” It’s no surprise the whole lot finally ends up fuzzy.

barney.jopson@ft.com