EXPATS and locals living in Spain will have lighter evenings to look forward to from this weekend as the clocks finally go forward.

At 2am on Sunday morning, Spain will jump ahead one hour to 3am.

The Canary Islands will go forward from 1am to 2am.

That means one hour less sleep but longer evenings ahead, with the sun setting 60 minutes later than it has in recent days.

The current process sees all of Europe making the change on the last weekend of March.

The concept was devised by George Vincent Hudson, a New Zealand entomologist in 1895, and was first used by Germany and Austria during the First World War to save on coal usage.

After the summer, the clocks will go back again – but that won’t happen until the last weekend of October.

If you’re unsure as to which way the clocks go during which season, an easy way to remember is that you ‘spring forward and fall back’.

The change keeps Spain in the same time zone as Poland, Serbia and Hungary – all nations whose capital are more than 2,000 kilometres to the east,

But it keeps Spain an hour ahead of the UK, which shares a similar longitude.

For years now there has been a discussion about moving the clocks back permanently, ending a Franco-era legacy from 1940 that attempted to align the nation with Nazi Germany.

The move meant that Spain moved out of kilter with neighbours Portugal, as well as the UK and Ireland.

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