Spain's time zone.

[Wealtheow]

Two related questions. What is the correct time zone to enter on Synscan mounts for mainland Spain? Is it the Geographic one or the official one? Second should daylight savings time be switched to Yes in Summer and No in winter?

[Kianna]

 

The correct time zone for mainland Spain is Central European Time (CET). Mainland Spain observes daylight saving time (DST) in the summer months, so you should switch the DST setting on your Synscan mount to "Yes" during the summer and "No" during the winter. To change the time zone and DST settings on your Synscan mount, connect the hand controller to the mount, press the MENU button, scroll down to TIME and press ENTER, select TIME ZONE and press ENTER, select CET and press ENTER, scroll down to DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME and press ENTER, select YES for summer months and NO for winter months, and press ENTER to save your settings.

Waiting for feedback whether it helped*

[Wealtheow]

Many thanks.  I was confused by the fact that Spain is in the UTC zone in the Synscan manual. I've been confused all my life by 'Daylight Saving Time':-)   

[johnturley]

8 minutes ago, Wealtheow said:

Many thanks.  I was confused by the fact that Spain is in the UTC zone in the Synscan manual. I've been confused all my life by 'Daylight Saving Time':-)   

I think that Spain used to be on the same time zone as the UK, but switched to CET when they joined the EU, although the Canary Islands remained on the same time zone as the UK.

Based on the longitude, mainland Spain should be on the same time zone as the UK (as I think is Portugal), and there was recently some talk about them switching back.

John 

[Chandra]

The official time in Spain is an anomaly that has been around for more than 80 years. While geographically the time should be governed by the passage over Spanish territory of meridian 0 (the one you know so well, Greenwich Meridian) and therefore be GMT (or UTC) + 0, in Spain (except in the Canary Islands, which they are further west anyway) UTC+1 is handled. This dates back to the beginning of the dictatorship of General Franco, who changed the clocks of all of Spain by one hour by decree in 1940 to adapt (it was said in the decree) to the time of the rest of the countries of Europe. And it is true that the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Portugal also advanced their official time by one hour during World War II in order to optimize daylight hours in a situation of global crisis. Therefore, in those years practically all of central and western Europe had the same official time.

However, at the end of the war, while some countries recovered the time that corresponded to them geographically, others, such as Spain, did not... Neither did the Netherlands, Luxembourg or France, which should also be in the GMT+0 time zone. In the case of Spain, some historians say that the dictator's decision had hidden political motivations in order to "please" Hitler, since, ultimately, it was the time hour in Berlin and the territories occupied by the Third Reich. The point is that this generates something as incongruous as Galicia, the westernmost region of continental Spain, has the same time as Warsaw (Poland), which is 3,200 kilometers away to the east, but one hour more than Porto (Portugal) just 150 kilometers to the south, which for Galicians generates a fairly significant difference between midday and the passage of the Sun through the meridian.

It is true that there has been a lot of talk about this for a long time, and there has even recently been a study commission on the possibility of adjusting the time hour. However, its application has been postponed pending the imminent abolition of the summer/winter time change in the EU, which, for the moment and delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, has not yet been implemented. Thus, the government published a report from the commission for the reform of the official time in March 2019 in which it proposed "not to produce any hasty change in the time zones as long as there is no shared consensus and practical dissemination to our citizenship of the risks and opportunities that it entails". Finally, the Commission's experts ruled out changing the time zone and stated in the report that after maintaining the current time zone for so many years, "the Spanish population has already developed an adaptation to that, and there are not enough reasons to modify it." We will therefore continue to maintain an hour difference with London.

[VNA]

Hello, to my understanding the longitude of Spain is roughy the same as England.
Madrid is at 3.70 W,  what is confusing is the standard time is 1 hour ahead of the sun, the daylight saving time is 2 hours ahead of the sun!

[Mr Spock]

Perhaps this will help.

[Chandra]

7 hours ago, VNA said:

Hello, to my understanding the longitude of Spain is roughy the same as England.
Madrid is at 3.70 W,  what is confusing is the standard time is 1 hour ahead of the sun, the daylight saving time is 2 hours ahead of the sun!

That's right... And that means that in summer time (GMT+2), in western areas like Galicia the Sun rises at 9 in the morning and sets at 10 at night... something a bit strange for these latitudes...

[saac]

On 17/11/2023 at 09:41, Wealtheow said:

Two related questions. What is the correct time zone to enter on Synscan mounts for mainland Spain? Is it the Geographic one or the official one? Second should daylight savings time be switched to Yes in Summer and No in winter?

There is a useful little app you can get for Android phones/tablets which presents a screen with all the correct data inputs (time zone adjusted)  in the correct format/syntax. I use it for my neq6 whenever I'm using it in handset mode and it works a treat. It is called SynscanInit.

Jim

 

 

Edited November 23, 2023 by saac

[JeremyS]

The time zone of Spain and the historical links noted above also explains why Spaniards eat so late:

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20170504-the-strange-reason-spaniards-eat-late

[Albir phil]

Spain is one hour ahead of the UK