The entrance of autumn brings with it a significant decrease in daylight hours and the expected change in clocks to adapt to winter time. This one-hour alteration will last until the month of March, with the arrival of spring. Despite being a change that is made every year, the question is always the same: should the clock be turned back or forward?
In Spain, as happens with the rest of European countries that also adapt their schedule to winter, the change takes place in the month of October. Specifically, this happens on the last weekend, meaning this year it will occur on the early morning from Saturday the 26th to Sunday the 27th.
It will be at that moment when all the clocks must be turned back one hour, so that at 3:00 a.m. it will be 2:00 a.m.. In this way, Sunday, October 27, will officially last twenty-five hours.
However, this time change will not need to be done manually on all devices. It will only have to be done in those analog or digital watches that are not connected to the internetas are smartphones, computers, tablets or smart televisions (Smart TV).
In all these electronic devices, unlike the previous ones, the change is made automatically thanks to the NTP network protocol (Network Time Protocol), which synchronizes the clocks of computer systems through a data network with variable latency.
In addition to sleeping an hour more during the night of October 26-27, turning the clocks back one hour that weekend will mainly affect the hours of light that will be from that date. Thus, it will dawn and dusk an hour earlier, with the aim of promoting energy savings, adapting the working day to the hours of sunlight.
This explanation, however, is no longer valid in the EU countries that implement this time change every year, and is increasingly gaining more detractors than defenders. Turning the clocks back one hour also brings with it sleep disturbancesjust as indicate from the Spanish Sleep Society. “Even if it is only for an hour, it alters the time of exposure to the sun during the day and unbalances the internal clock, which takes several days to readjust,” they maintain.
This is the reason why it was chosen to change the time during the early hours of a weekendso that the body has an extra day to adapt better. Despite this, they warn that “it is not uncommon for some people to report irritability, lack of concentration, poor work performance and insomnia in the first days after the time change.”
For this reason, in 2018 a proposal was presented to try to suppress the two time changes that take place every year. However, “no final decision has been made” on this measure, as collects the European Counciland “no deadline has been established to make such a decision.”
In the case of Spain, it is the Royal Decree 236/2002, published in the BOE in 2022which collects and establishes the calendar of start and end dates of summer time for the following five years, hence no changes expected In this respect, at least, until 2026.
