Although it's been many years since I have lived in Seville, Spain I sometimes find myself reverting back the Spanish time schedule, and for some reason I find it comforting. For me, the idea of eating dinner at 9 or 10 p.m. is not unheard of, and I fondly remember the days when a long midday siesta was incorporated -- along with delicious Spanish soups, meats and cheeses, and the company of friends and family around the table.

And for me, tapas were always welcome at any time of the day, especially when it came to a croqueta de pollo, a tortilla Española or some Manchego cheese and a baguette.

Cravings aside, I personally think there are pros and cons when it comes to weighing the Spanish time table. While it makes sense from a productivity standpoint during tough economic times to eliminate the siesta and make one's bedtime earlier, there is something special about the Spanish lifestyle that is to be admired and it's cherished by many Spaniards.

While the rest of the world is getting sleepy and tucked in, Spaniards are up and about, with their evening beginning at 10 p.m., the time when dinner is usually served and prime-time TV shows begin. Surveys show that nearly a quarter of Spain's population is watching television between midnight and 1 a.m., according to The New York Times.

If people area eating so late (which has long been associated with weight gain) then why doesn't Spain have an obesity problem?

Well, according to WebMD expert, Kathleen M. Zelman, MPH, RD, LD, years ago, nutrition pioneer Adele Davis gave her well-known advice to "eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper."

At the same token, a calorie is a calorie regardless of what time you consume food, which has been dubbed by nutrition experts as the "calorie in/calorie out theory of weight control."

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Weight Control Information Network, "it does not matter what time of day you eat. It is what and how much you eat and how much physical activity you do during the whole day that determines whether you gain, lose, or maintain your weight."

"It is the Spanish identity, to eat in another time, to sleep in another time," Jorge Rodríguez, 36, told The New York Times who had to rise in the morning for his bank job.

"Spain still operates on its own clock and rhythms. But now that it is trying to recover from a devastating economic crisis - in the absence of easy solutions - a pro-efficiency movement contends that the country can become more productive, more in sync with the rest of Europe, if it adopts a more regular schedule."

How would the change affect Spaniards' day moving forward if they said adios to a long midday siesta?

Considering siestas have become a way of life for Spaniards for decades, life would fundamentally change. The new schedule would be comparable to Americans and the rest of Europe with an hour or less to eat and no time for napping or resting. In addition, "TV programs would be scheduled an hour earlier, and the elastic Spanish working day would be replaced by something closer to a 9-to-5 timetable," The New York Times adds.

It has also been proposed to change time itself by turning back the clocks an hour, which would move Spain out of the time zone that includes France, Germany and Italy, The New York Times reports. "Instead, Spain would join its natural geographical slot with Portugal and Britain in Coordinated Universal Time, the modern successor to Greenwich Mean Time."

"'We want to see a more efficient culture,' said Ignacio Buqueras, the most outspoken advocate of changing the Spanish schedule. 'Spain has to break the bad habits it has accumulated over the past 40 or 50 years.'"

As of now, Spain seems to be on board with the change, and reportedly in September, a parliamentary commission recommended that the government turn back the clocks an hour and introduce a regular eight-hour workday, but that has yet to take effect.

Many Spaniards also feel that the current schedule isn't conducive to working families and that the late morning and midday siesta makes for a very long day.

Do these antiquated rules reflect an antiquated past that is still thriving?

"The national schedule can be traced to World War II, when the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco moved the clocks forward to align with Nazi Germany, as also happened in neighboring Portugal. After the defeat of Hitler, Portugal returned to Greenwich Mean Time, but Spain did not," The New York Times reports.

"At the time, Spain was a largely agrarian nation, and many farmers set their schedules by the sun, not by clocks. Farmers ate lunch and dinner as before, even if the clocks declared it was an hour later. But as Spain industrialized and urbanized, the schedule gradually pushed the country away from the European norm."

"People got stuck in that time," said Javier Díaz-Giménez, an economist. "Eventually, the clocks took over."

Franco's reign also served as an influence over Spain's time table. He ordered radio stations to broadcast reports of news and propaganda twice a day to coincide with mealtimes at about 2:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. The arrival of Television in the 1950s, daily programming followed suit, with a government channel ending at midnight with the national anthem and a portrait of Franco. Then, in the 1990s, Spain's post-Franco transition to democracy was in progress and TV also began evolving and the Franco era began to fade, but the siesta schedule remained the same.

What do you think, is Spain still stuck in time and should they change their schedule?