Find time to work hard and play harder.Subscribe

You are here: Home / Productivity / Spain Moves Paid Holidays to Monday for Productivity’s Sake

Spain Moves Paid Holidays to Monday for Productivity’s Sake

By Marissa Brassfield 02/8/12
man sitting on a chair in spain

(CC) Jesus Solana/Flickr

The business associations and unions in Spain are hoping to boost productivity by moving all 14 paid holidays to Monday, thereby thwarting three “bridges,” or extra-long weekends employees create with paid vacation days when holidays fall in the middle of the week.

For their write-up of the phenomenon, Ilan Brat and David Roman Wall Street Journal interviewed Tatiana Restrepo, a marketer for Rusticae who estimates that her bridges turned her 36 days off into 50 days off, including weekends. Restrepo called the move “horrible” and said that bridges are her “escape valve.”

The bridge ban could help alleviate negative stereotypes other nations have of Spain’s leisure-loving culture. “Mentally, everyone thinks that [bridge] weeks are not for working,” said business association representative Alberto Nadal. Cutting them out “is a symbol of a change in mentality, the idea that we have to change the way we do things to belong to the euro zone.”

Do you think the Spanish government should leave bridges alone, or will this standardization bolster the local economy?

Filed Under: Productivity, Work Productivity Tagged With: , , , , ,
About Marissa Brassfield

Marissa Brassfield is a productivity expert, high-performance author and communication efficiency specialist who helps solopreneurs become ridiculously efficient so that they can pursue their passions and still have time to live well. Connect on Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.

  • Nicole

    As a Madrid resident, I was a little perturbed by this news at first, but really it doesn’t make that big of a difference. They’re only moving 3 holidays to Mondays anyway. Its not like they can move Christmas day or anything. It will also affect the tourism business as they have a lot of business during these “bridge” weekends.

    And more days in the office doesn’t equal more productivity anyway. The days are long here, normally from 9-7 pm so (in my experience) people are just worn out by 4 p.m. We work longer hours than anyone in Europe and we are less productive, so I think they should reduce the workday from 10 hours to the more reasonable 8 hour workday.
    #mytwocents

  • http://ridiculouslyefficient.com @efficient

    My, that is a long workday. Thanks for sharing your insights, Nicole!

  • KatharineRose

    Our family(with 3 teens 14,17 and 20) had a lovely, informative and enjoyable tour with http://www.privatetoursinistanbul.com He was so knowledgeable(former art history professor) and really brought the art to life for our family. His special anecdotes and information made the enormity of the museum manageable, plus provided an excellent introduction to Spanish history.Afterwards, we had a stroll through some of the older neighborhoods and ended up in a typical local resteraunt for lunch. Later in our trip, when we went through the Picasso museum in Barcelona, my children were very interested in Picasso’s interpretation of Velasquez’s works-thanks to all they learned from Mr Satt. That is a great success to me!

  • Pingback: fish yellow archean