Big question. If Spain lies west of the Prime Meridian, how can Madrid be one hour ahead of Greenwich, England? Somebody help me out here!!
What time is it?
- Thread starter Kings Gambit
- Start date
Because time zones do not precisely follow meridians. Same in the US, the lines marking the time zones are both political and geographic.
You spurred me to check the time zone—it’s CET—Central European Time Zone. GMT+1. I imagine an EU construct. Thanks. They evidently don’t call it that (Daylight), but that’s what it is!
Spain is central Europe ?
Is that like Toronto being the center of Canada ?
They have been like that, for as long as I can remember.
It WOULD be interesting to know how far back in history it goes. "Screw you England we are arent following you"
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We live in roughly the middle of the Eastern Time Zone. When we visited my mother-in-law near Boston at the eastern edge of the time zone we were always amazed at how early the sun came and how soon it became dark, roughly 30 minutes different.
Evidently Franco changed it in 1940 to match Germany.
Spain Has Been In The 'Wrong' Time Zone For 7 Decades
Spain's dictator Francisco Franco set the country's clocks an hour ahead in World War II in order to be aligned with Hitler's Germany. Memo to Spain: the war is over, the Nazis lost and it's OK to turn back the clocks now.
www.npr.org
Franco and Hilter were buds.... That's why the bombing of Guernica happened. Guernica was declared a neutral zone in the Spanish Civil war but Hilter wanted to check out some new weapons he was developing for WWII employment and so Franco let him bomb Guernica, clearly no concern for any resistance. Beautifully timed to hit market day just to make sure you could kill as many innocent people as possible....
dj
dj
Here is an odd one
How many time zones are there?
The quick answer that would seem to make sense is 24 (15' of longitude each adding up to 360'). The same as the number of hours in a day as the earth travels around the sun or.
However, the time zones on either side of the date line are half all the others (7.5') one half +12 the other-12 but on different days and so there are 25. Not even mentioning all the little local offsets of 30 minutes and some of 15.
Goofier than Spain is Iceland parts are actually geographically two time zones over but they are in the same time zone as Britain.
Someday perhaps we will all use Zulu time or Coordinated Universal Time makes traveling way simpler.
There is also a metric time system that really makes sense but is just too hard to get your head around.
How many time zones are there?
The quick answer that would seem to make sense is 24 (15' of longitude each adding up to 360'). The same as the number of hours in a day as the earth travels around the sun or.
However, the time zones on either side of the date line are half all the others (7.5') one half +12 the other-12 but on different days and so there are 25. Not even mentioning all the little local offsets of 30 minutes and some of 15.
Goofier than Spain is Iceland parts are actually geographically two time zones over but they are in the same time zone as Britain.
Someday perhaps we will all use Zulu time or Coordinated Universal Time makes traveling way simpler.
There is also a metric time system that really makes sense but is just too hard to get your head around.
Spain has a checkered past. I suspect it was the leadership. So often Spain, once one of the richest countries and been ruled by members of the European aristocracy. The Austrian Hapsburgs were Kings of Spain passing the title through the family, taking the work value of the Spanish "peasants" seemed only right. The German act of using Spain to test their weapons must have seemed only natural. Besides Franco disliked the Basque region. And independent enclave in northern Spain. Guernica was viewed as the hot bed of insurrection.
Picasso captured the horror of that April day in 1937, as German bombs fell on the citizens in the Market place.
I guess having their own time zone is fitting.
Picasso captured the horror of that April day in 1937, as German bombs fell on the citizens in the Market place.
I guess having their own time zone is fitting.
Franco seemed to have a strange love/hate relationship with the Basque region. He would spend his summer vacations - specifically the month of August - in the Basque region. He had taken over a palace in San Sebastian called El Palacio de Ayete.
When I lived there, it had been closed to the locals for decades - like almost half a century as Franco used it from 1940 through 1970 and then it took a long time after that to be opened to the public.
Fun story, I was attending an international conference while living there that was taking place in City Hall in downtown San Sebastian, and met a professor from New York City that was an invited speaker at the conference. He and I started chatting and he invited me and my wife to join him that evening at a special dinner banquet being given to the invited speakers and their guests - being held in Palacio de Ayete! I called my wife and said, hey, you need to get dressed in formal wear, we're going to dinner! She told me she was too tired to go out as she'd had a really hard day at work. I replied saying, look, dinner is at the Palacio de Ayete! She freaked out! She asked how did I get invited into there as no local Basque had been allowed into Ayete since 1940!
Adrenaline obviously kicked in and she was fully dressed by the time I got home (I was only about 10 minutes away). I jumped into a tux and we went to Ayete, guests of the New York Professor! It was great. The entourage was given a tour of the facility, with it's history etc, and then one of the local chefs (a world renowned chef in fact) prepared a 7 course meal. It was awesome!
Basque cuisine in my opinion, is one of the finest cuisines of the world. Not well known on this side of the pond...
dj
They wouldn't have let me attend, it was a totally formal event; evening gowns and tuxedos!
Although I happen to much prefer the Canadian Tuxedo! I have several versions!
dj