Time in Madrid

Spain used Greenwich time until March 1940, when Franco's government moved the clocks forward an hour to align with Germany and occupied France. The change was never reversed. Madrid sits at 3.7° west, so the official clock is now about an hour and a quarter ahead of the sun in winter and more than two hours ahead in summer. The Canary Islands, by contrast, still keep Western European Time, one hour behind the mainland.

Spanish parliamentary reports have repeatedly suggested returning to UTC+0, arguing that the mismatch contributes to late working days and short sleep, but successive governments have not changed it.

Because the clock runs ahead of the sun, Spanish meal times look late from abroad: lunch around 2:00 to 3:30 PM and dinner at 9:00 PM or later. Solar noon in Madrid falls near 2:15 PM in summer. At the June solstice the sun rises around 6:45 AM and sets about 9:50 PM, roughly 15 hours of daylight. In December sunrise is around 8:35 AM and sunset near 5:50 PM, a little over 9 hours 15 minutes.

Many offices work 9:00 to 18:00 or later with a long lunch, and in summer some keep a continuous morning schedule ending around 15:00. The Spanish stock market trades from 9:00 to 17:30. London is one hour behind all year; New York is six hours behind most of the year, so 3:00 PM in Madrid is 9:00 AM in New York. The EST to CET table shows the hours from the American side.