Why do spaniards eat so late?

The meal times of the spaniards are viewed with incredulity, if not clear misunderstanding by the rest of Europeans. When a German is going to eat at 12 noon, a Spanish can do it at two or three in the afternoon. Contrary to what many think, this is not an ancestral custom. It's actually a fairly recent practice. Traditionally lunch took place in Spain around one o'clock. However after the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the economic situation of families heavily worsened and forced to householders to take a minimum of two jobs. Usually the base or main job was an 8 to 10 hours last. Since the salary earned was not enough to sustain family,   men  were forced - cause women was rarely allowed to work outside home - to take a second job, usually shorter. Also saturday was a working day.  Because the issue was to maximize the morning, workers  had a solid block of at least eight hours non-stop that shifted the timing of the meal a couple of hours laters. As an example, a worker X worked in a factory from 6 am to 2 pm,  took luch at 3 pm, and at four in the afternoon incorporated to a small machine shop where spent four more hours. If you look closely at the prevailing meal times for the last twenty or thirty years, showed a clear tendency towards early times for lunch. For example, in 1975 it was normal to eat at 3 pm and take dinner at 10 pm. Currently the luch is around two in the afternoon and dinner use to be before 9 pm, as latest. Probably in next years the meal times in Spain and the rest of western countries will match a lot more.

The meal times are not really a major issue. The important thing is to make five meals a day of decreasing importance. If we sleep 8 hours - that's what we should sleep - we have 16 hours of "activity". If we divide the 16 hours between five meals we find that we should eat every 3 hours and 12 minutes. All this of course is up to hours of business, school, etc. If breakfast is at 7 am, we should eat something around 10 h, take luch at 1 pm, lighter snack at 16 pm and dinner at 7 pm, as light as possible.