Valencia is in its week of fiestas at the moment called Fallas. Here in Spain we don’t bother with a bank holiday on a Monday, if a holiday is there to be enjoyed then it has to occupy a much longer time period, think about the upcoming Feria de Abril in Sevilla, last week’s Carnival in the Canary Islands, the Magdalena in Castellon in the next couple of weeks and a whole host of others that exist in every small town, village and large city in Spain. They all span almost a whole week.
The Coastal Town That They Forgot to Close Down
I have said before and will say it again, Spain would have a much larger economy if it could be bothered to actually try. December is the perfect example as the majority of the month involves some form of holiday. The summer traditionally was a time for rest as the temperature got too hot and from that comes the Spanish tradition of closing down businesses for a month in July or August or in the most extreme cases for the whole two month period.
Look at it from the other point of view though. I noticed this when I visited a seaside town to the North of Valencia in January. Everything was closed.
The shops actually open for the three month period encompassing the 15th of June to the 15th of September, some may actually open for four months instead by doing the whole of June and September.
They need to make their money for the year in those three or four months though!
They are still paying out for the shopfront rental, utilities minimum payments and council taxes during the eight months they are not open. Can you business survice under those conditions? Well there are some reasons they may be able to.
I was actually amazed by the seasonality of the Spanish working calendar when I first came here until I discovered the miracle of “pluriempleo” and contracts that are “Fijo Descontinuo” and this allows businesses to operate when seasonality is high.
Firstly Pluriempleo. This is having more than one job. Usually it is one in the morning and one in the afternoon and possibly another in the evening. It is forbidden for “Funcionarios”, civil servants, to have more than one job but many take no notice of course and as their working days often end at 2pm many civil servants take casual work in the evening or these days start up their own little business. However Pluriempleo also works in another way thanks to the type of contract mentioned above.
A “Fijo descontinuo” contract means that you are employed for the season, whether that be for the orange picking and packing season or the holiday season and at the end of the period, maybe four months, you finish but you are guaranteed your job again next year. This type of contract has been used and abused in Spain for teachers working just nine months at academies or ten months at private schools but then having to rely on the State for unemployment benefits for the two months of summer. Now that this particular loophole has been closed up schools have been forced to give permanent contracts now if they want to keep teachers, the seasonal jobs remain in hostelery and agriculture and many people travel around the country from harvest to harvest and seaside town to seaside town permanently employed but never with a fixed abode.
In a further post we will be looking at the contract system in Spain in greater depth as there is too much unrelated to this post to consider. However the two types of work mentioned come directly out of the fiestas and working calendar in Spain.
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Incredulous and important knowledge about living and working in Spain. Thanks.
In Japan and to a lesser extent, USA, there is cleary a more prevailing hard work ethic.
Japan is collective and USA individualistic yet both are entirely efficient when compared to Spain.
I for one can’t be doing with the fragmented working day in Spain, the siesta, traffic heavy at lunch and again later. It feels like working two days in one. And to get anything done you need to take time out of work or the office you need is closed.
Its chaos!
On the other hand familes being pressurised with mums and dads working on Sundays and at nights in Tescos and Morrisons in the UK may be more efficient but what has happened to family ideals?
Spain – from an outside in point of view – could do with a strategic overview. It would be sensible to align holidays around commerce so production and efficiencies could be maximised and up the economy.
People out partying until four in the morning and then to work at seven-thirty cannot be productive and even unsafe!
So much disruption too…young children up all night on bank holidays and then confused they have to go to bed early on work days!
But they don’t see it that way! Holidays are sacred here..they are deeply embedded into Spanish culture. Without a central Government mandate for efficiency through change and diss-continued EU funding then priorities will remain the same.
However, who would want Sunday opening? Not me for one. That is something Spain has that the UK has sadly spoiled.
I wouldn’t want Spain to become a UK, or USA or Japan but some sense and reason is needed.
Nothing will change, I feel, unless there is a total economic meltdown.
And fighting the system is debilitating and is akin to herding cats.
Perhaps we simply have to forget about management and economics (in a north European sense) or we become control freaks.
Spain has its place in the universe…
In terms of entropy maybe its naturally chaotic and therin maybe is could utilise this in the type of industries it focuses on to replace the lost 25% from construction industry collapse?
Maybe Spain should have even more holidays to maximise its tourism industry and become THE place for R and R?
And chaos provides conditions for more creative industries.
Perhaps a different business model is needed here to generate sufficient cash in short spurts of seasonality…
So maybe there is genuine value in the felixibility of multi-job approach -
Sell ice cream in summer
Hot chocolate in winter
And make hay while the sun shines!
“Maybe Spain should have even more holidays to maximise its tourism industry and become THE place for R and R?
And chaos provides conditions for more creative industries.”
That is the takeaway Chris. More holidays yes!!!!