Meridian, not of Greenwich, but of Lisbon. World War I, Estado Novo, Cavaco and Guterres. Sunset after 10pm.
We are still getting used to the time change. We know it will happen on the last Sunday in October, but in the first days (sometimes in the first weeks) after the one-hour change, the phase is one of adaptation.
But this routine was not like this for most centuries. It was only a little over 100 years ago that Portugal left the Lisbon meridian and adopted the Greenwich Meridian. It was in 1912, still in the early days of a republican country.
In practice, what happened at that time? All clocks in Portugal were set forward 36 minutes and 44 seconds; because that was the temporal distance between the capital of Portugal and the English area near London.
To save energy from World War Iremember the radio, the summer time It was adopted most years until 1930.
This summer time was canceled in Estado Novoin 1966. Américo Tomás, president of the Republic at that time, decided to abandon this change. Because there should be “a unique time throughout the year”. Over the course of a decade, Portugal had the same time as Spain, France or Germany. Something that was repeated with Cavaco Silva, between 1992 and 1996.
During these two periods, there was a lag of 2 hours and 36 minutes to its natural solar time in summer – and 1 hour and 36 minutes out of phase in winter.
O The sun didn’t appear until after 9am in the morning, in winter, and I only left after 10pmin the summer.
“And, without natural sunlight (in the early morning), the body does not wake up”, recalls Rui Agostinho, professor in the Department of Physics at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon.
O current time zone has been in force for almost 30 years, since 1996, under the Government of António Guterres.
The former director of the Lisbon Astronomical Observatory believes that, without “summer time”, they would lose “sunshine hours” that would disappear by the end of the afternoon.
But Rui Agostinho says in Renascença that the time change that always happens at the end of October should happen in September.
Changing the time only in October is “very complicated”, says the expert: “At this moment (before the time change) at 7 am it is still dark in the sky. We are having in October what we will have more or less later in December. The dawn is extremely late, very late, and the transition from Friday time to Monday time is very felt.”
Changing the time in September would be a “more peaceful” change due to the temperature.
