Working to live vs. living to work
VALENCIA, Spain – A Spanish woman employed by the studyabroad agency working with us here summed up the difference between the Spanish and American lifestyles better than I’ve ever heard.
“Americans live to work,” she said. “The Spanish work to live.”
She explained that while careers are important to the Spanish people, what’s more important is experiencing the joys of life fully each day/night: the sumptuous food, the lovely weather, the great beaches, the stunning vistas, the captivating people around you.
Whereas Americans usually go home after eight to 12 hours of work to either watch television, search through their computers or scroll through their phones, then go to bed between 10 and 11:30 to prepare for another day in the employment trenches, most Spaniards go out each night to eat, drink and talk. They stay out until 11:30, midnight, even the early-morning hours. In the summertime they often have their kids in tow all night. The streets of Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid and Toledo and other Spanish cities are packed with diners and drinkers of all ages until the witching hour, at least.
Then they get up the next morning to go to work.
The Spanish workday is different from ours, though. Most Spanish office workers show up at 9:30 or so … maybe. They then take a half-hour to 45-minute break around 11 to go get some coffee or tea and pastries, cookies, toast with tomato spread and ham or something else to fend off hunger until lunchtime.
They work again until about 2, the earliest time lunch is served in Spain. They then take an hour — OK, maybe a bit longer — for lunch, during which they may have some beer or wine.
“It’s not like they’re really drinking. It’s only beer or wine,” said one transplant living in Spain, probably not even half-kidding.
The workday ends around 6 to 6:30. Folks might go home for a bit to rest, maybe change clothes. Then it’s back on the town for another night of eating, drinking and general revelry.
This may seem like an exaggeration or generalization about Spanish life until one looks up at the cities’ skyscraping apartment buildings around 10 p.m. each night and sees, at the most, 15 percent of the lights in the apartments on or reflecting the glow of a television or computer in use.
Does this lifestyle work? It appears to. Spain is a prosperous and productive country, having bounced back well from the worldwide recession of a decade ago. Spanish life expectancy is 82 and a half, which is four years longer than in the United States, despite all of the smoking and drinking in Spain.
It also may reflect that in Spain people eat better (less junk food and olive oil over animal fat for cooking), walk much, much more and therefore are thinner in general, and spend more time with friends and family. It’s not uncommon, in fact, to see people in their 80s, either as couples or in groups, out to dinner at a neighborhood cafe, having walked there from their homes.
I get swept up in the Spanish lifestyle every time I’m here. The force of it is nearly irresistible. I tend to eat out more often. I tend to stay up later and rise later. I tend to drink more beer.
But I’m still a career-driven American. I, for example, am writing this column on a Sunday, which is supposed to be a day off, at home and particularly here. I’m even doing so with a sore throat.
But that may be from the beer I drank last night during another late night/early morning.