Clocks will go forward by one hour at 1 am in the morning tonight , meaning that you’ll lose an hour of sleep, but evenings will be longer.
One of the smaller advantages British and Irish tourists to the Canaries have discovered is that there is no need to adjust watches or phone alarms when arriving on the islands. That’s because the Canaries operate on exactly the same time-zones as the British Isles – GMT in winter, and GMT+1 (or British Summer Time) from March to October.
This has always been the case on the islands, but in 1940 General Franco ordered that clocks in mainland Spain were moved forward one hour to match the time zones of his allies in Germany and Italy. Since then, the Canaries has always been “una hora menos” (one hour less) in relation to the mainland, complicating the lives of national radio presenters who have had to announce a different time for the Canaries for more than 80 years.
Campaigns to change the hours to reflect the passage of the sun more accurately have so far failed. It seems that the Canaries like their longer evenings, which fit well with a tourist economy and which are also claimed to be more environmentally friendly, allowing shops and public buildings to use less electricity on lighting and air-conditioning.
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