EU survey on changing the clocks seeks residents' feedback
Tuesday, July 10, 2018 @ 8:56 PM
AN INFORMAL survey launched by the European Union is aimed at finding out what residents think of the twice-yearly hour change, and to give reasons to expand on their views.
Always a controversial issue in Spain, which is an hour ahead of its natural geographical time zone, and equally in the UK where a decision to prevent night falling before 16.00 in the winter would mean children in Scotland walking to school in the dark, the European Union recognises that the reasons for which the clock changes were created, and later maintained, are now obsolete.
Debate continues to rage in Spain, where the popular theory is that the reason for the mainland and Balearic Islands being on Central European Time (CET) in winter and Central European Summer Time (CEST) in summer is that, during World War II, dictator General Franco moved the clocks forward to align with his allies in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and that this has never been changed.
More recently, however, physics experts have debunked this hypothesis, explaining that it was a post-war decision by France's Général de Gaulle in a bid to keep mainland western Europe on the same time zone to aid in maintaining peace.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com