Clock change in Spain: when the clocks go back or forward

Spain changes its clocks twice a year, always on a Sunday: they go forward an hour on the last Sunday of March and back an hour on the last Sunday of October. The rule is an EU one, adopted by Spain in 2002 with no end date. Here is the next change, the official dates to 2031, and where the plan to scrap it really stands.

When the clocks change

Directive 2000/84/EC sets summer time to start on the last Sunday of March and end on the last Sunday of October, in every member state at the same moment: 01:00 universal time. Spain adopted it through Real Decreto 236/2002, which applies it «con carácter indefinido», with no end date.

The exact dates are published every five years. Spain's latest order, Orden PCM/186/2022, runs to 2026. The 2027-2031 dates have already been set by the European Commission in the EU Official Journal; Spain has not yet published its own order for those years, but because the rule is permanent the dates are the same.

What exactly happens

In October, at 03:00 the clocks go back to 02:00. That Sunday has 25 hours: you get an extra hour in bed, and it gets dark earlier in the afternoon.

In March, at 02:00 the clocks jump straight to 03:00. The day has 23 hours: you lose an hour, and it gets dark later.

Barcelona and the rest of mainland Spain are on UTC+1 in winter and UTC+2 in summer. In the Canary Islands the change comes an hour earlier on the local clock (02:00 back to 01:00 in October), because the whole EU changes at the same instant.

Will the clock change end?

Nothing has been decided. The European Commission proposed scrapping seasonal changes on 12 September 2018, and the European Parliament voted in favour on 26 March 2019. But the Council, where the governments sit, has not adopted a position; in the Council's own words, progress "stalled in 2019".

In 2025 the Polish Council presidency proposed a two-year trial of permanent summer time, and in February 2026 the Commission launched a study on the impact of ending the changes, due to finish by the end of 2026.

In October 2025 Spain's prime minister said Spain had proposed in the EU Council that the seasonal change should end, without saying whether Spain would rather keep summer or winter time. It is a proposal, not a decision: until the EU adopts a new directive, the clocks keep changing.

How Spain got this time zone

An order of 7 March 1940 put Spain's legal time forward 60 minutes from 16 March that year. The order called it a "temporal" (temporary) advance, to keep in step with "otros países europeos", other European countries. Spain has kept that time zone ever since, and the expert committee that studied time reform in 2019 did not propose changing it.

Does it save energy?

Saving energy is the classic argument for the change. The latest official assessment we found, a Spanish government note of 27 March 2020, says there are no up-to-date reports in Spain showing that the change saves energy, and that across the EU the savings are "marginales", marginal.

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