I just returned from a week long trip to Madrid/Barcelona. The trip was absolutely wonderful. Spain is a very beautiful country and now I can see why everyone on this board is so fond of it! One question though, how is a person supposed to know when they can go to a restaurant/store? The problem I kept running into was when I wanted to go somewhere it was closed!! For instance, I wanted to go to a restaurant for dinner and when I got there at 8:45PM (which I thought would have been during the time that the last meal of the day is served) it was closed! The thing that bugged me the most was the hours the establishment would be open were not posted on the door. Is this something that is customary? It seemed that way to me from the various stores and restaurants that I looked at. I know that American's rush around a lot more and are more hung up on schedules, but it just seemed really odd to me that what one would concider to be essential information wasn't available. Even odder, places like Dunkin Donuts and Burger King which are either open 24 horus in America, or close to it, weren't open at 8:30AM. Not that I was planning on eating there, but it was just something odd that I noticed. Has anyone else run into this problem, or did they just close because they saw me coming??

Spaniards normally don't eat "dinner" until about 10pm. You can find restaurants open at 9:30, but much earlier than that and you'd have to help the staff set the tables . "Lunch" doesn't happen until 2:30-3:00. Lots of grazing happens between meals, so folks aren't usually half starved when they finally eat! (it seemed to me that cafes were open just about all the time, and I never figured out how that happened!) I don't know what your background is, but I teach this sort of thing to my students as part of cultural awareness. The guidebooks I have on Spain could provide the same information. Most good restaurants here open for a certain number of hours for lunch and then close until 5 or so for dinner, so it isn't all that strange that restaurants aren't open all day.

Way back when dinosaurs ruled the world and I was young, stores were not open 24/7 like we assume they will be now. NO store was open on Sunday because it was assumed people would be at church and then with family. Living the "24/7 everything is open" system means people do not have family time together. The folks at the grocery store on Thanksgiving, for example, are not able to have that special family meal! Spaniards value their time with their family and friends too much to sacrifice it for profit. Stores close about 2:00 so everyone can go home to a leisurely sit-down meal with the entire family, take a nap (if so inclined) and then get back to work for a few hours. Stores may open about 5 (unless the nap took longer than usual ) and could stay open until 8:30 or 9. A large majority of them are family run (or small businesses, not the Big Box stuff we have here), so if the family is to have family time, stores and restaurants simply can't be open all the time. I don't know what the deal is with franchises...I don't even eat at those places here .

One of the neatest features of Spanish culture is that they take joy in the simple things we seem to have forgotten, like spending time sitting around a table with family and friends and sharing a great meal without watching the clock!

Oh, Carolina, I noticed this, too! Privately owned restaurants open when they want to! And another thing ... so many times I would request something from the menu and the waiter would say, "Hmmm. No. No [name of dish] today." And so I would ask for something else (with similar ingredients). And he would shake his head and say, "Hmm. No. No [name of dish] today, too. No [name of crucial ingredient]." So at that point I fold my hands, put down the menu, smile and say, "What do you suggest?"

It's a different world! Here in the States a person might throw a hissy fit if they were told they couldn't have three or four of the menu options because there was "no broccoli today!"

It is hard for me to eat so late (especially because I like to wake up early); normally at home I don't eat after 7 pm, so Spanish dinners are an ordeal for me! But it is so great to not have to rush. No one is kicking you out of the restaurant. You can stay for hours and hours. Of course, this makes it harder to get into places, too.

Oh well!

We found that the different eating hours were great for us, with our jet lag--on our first day in Spain, we defied all advice and took a long nap from about 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. or so. It was basically like a night's sleep, and we woke up starving and ready to head out for tapas or dinner. It may not be the way to get over jet lag in MOST countries (everyone always seems to say that you shouldn't nap--just get yourself onto their schedule ASAP by staying up that first day), but it works like a charm in Spain.

I agree about the difficulties with the menu from time to time--I have been in the habit of asking for recommendations or simply sticking with basics (they ALWAYS have tortilla or some ham thing). My Spanish is too bad for me to go through the ordeal of ordering ten times until I come up with something they DO have that day!

Thanks for your replies! I was worried that I was the only one having "problems" with this! I think I have the answer to why Spaniards are so thin. The restaurants are always closed when a person is looking for a meal!!
My solution was to go to Champion (grocery store) and buy bread and cheese. I just had to make sure that I was there sometime between 9:15AM and 9:15PM (their hours). I was glad to see they posted their hours, but it was funny to me that they were quarter past the hour instead of on the hour or half-past.
I suppose this silliness is one of the things that I will always remember about my wonderful trip to Spain.

I'm sure it all has something to do with the well known Spanish ¡Vivo yo! and their legendary independence. Just because the restaurante down the street is open at 17:00 doesn't mean YOUR restaurante has to be open at the same time! And I cannot imagine all the restaurant owners getting together,as they might in the US and deciding on a uniform time...the concept of "uniform" is somewhat alien to the Spanish anyway,¡Que Diós les bendiga!

I know what you mean....It seemed like whenever we needed to go to the bank it was closed and when we were eating our dinner nobody else was. By the time I got the hang of the schedule I had to leave.

LOL, I have been reading posts here for a while compiling information but this was just too funny. Maestra, what a romantic poetic view you have of Spain.

“Spaniards value their time with their family and friends too much to sacrifice it for profit”.
I swear I was cracking up at loud when I read that. You think stores in Spain do not open 24 hours because of spending time with family and friends and because business men have other priorities before profits? The real reason stores don’t open on Sundays (although throughout the past years they finally gradually started to at least the first sunday of every month) and do not open 24 hours is only because of one thing: Workers Unions. They are completely against liberalisation of store hours since in their view it would lead to an exploitation of workers. They can’t see how much more employment and what a massive input that would be into the economy, unions in Spain are much more concerned about protecting those who already have jobs and getting them more benefits and comfortable working conditions (which are already plenty comfortable) than on getting the unemployed back to work.

Take into account, of all the developed countries, which are the ones with the most flexible store hours? Those with the weakest unions: the US and Britain. On the other hand those with the less flexible economies and strongest unions have the most regulations on retail hours: France, Spain, Germany (Germany has the worlds 2 largest Unions, there stores don’t even open on Saturday afternoon).
The fact of the matter is, businesses in Spain are run by the same type of ruthless capitalistic businessmen as in the US, Britain or wherever. The only difference is the political constraints placed on them (the government in Spain would rather avoid a direct confrontation with Unions over this issue, at least for the time being, hopefully in the near future they will do it, as they have been, little by little).

Thanks for setting me straight (and I'm glad I added some humor to your life!)

I was basing my view on what friends have told me about their values and what matters to them. The eternal romantic, I think unions are supposed to reflect the needs/wants of those who join them. My friends (one from Bilbao and the other from Granada) have family members with talleres of their own that may spontaneously close if something better comes up. The friend from Granada who lives here most of the time gets frustrated by the lack of American work ethic, but gets nowhere. The friend from Bilbao told me it was just a better attitude towards life. She insists that Spaniards have the time to spend talking with friends and taking long lunches because they would rather enjoy life than be rich. Americans want to be rich first, then enjoy life (giant blanket generalization, I know!)

I knew that the bus drivers, train conductors, postal workers and the like had powerful unions and could bring the country to its knees if they wanted to. I hadn't realized that the mom and pop stores and 5 table restaurants were also unionized. Thanks for the information...you learn something new every day!

Well Emiliano, I don't think a small shop / business can afford to hire more employees to be able to open 24 hours or on Sundays.

It's not only the salaries you have to pay but also the taxes and social security.

If there was a complete liberalization of store opening hours only big deparment stores, supermarkets or chain of shops would open. That is, it would only benefit to the big companies.

As for the flexibility in Britain, I don't think stores closing at 5pm is very flexible.