That's because of Franco's timezone shift: we were shifted to GMT+1 because the fascist dictator loved Germany. Odd because the Greenwich meridian crosses half of Spain in Aragon.
Not really. The difference between eastern Spain and southern France is already striking and they are on the same meridian and same timezone. Its not hard for me to see a shop that closes at 9pm in Spain, then move 50km north and find exactly the same brand shop closing at 6pm in France (E.g. fnac), practically with midday sun on summer.
Lately France is getting a bit more of the delay too, with shops opening at 10 and closing at 19.
