That’s in addition to other controversial proposals, like cutting education funding.

But not everything Rajoy is doing to cut spending and increase productivity is raising hackles: He’s also pushing for a sort of “holiday shuffle.”

Spain has 14 holiday days per year. That’s two or three more than what Americans have. In the prime minister’s quest to boost productivity, he isn’t suggesting eliminating any holidays. Just moving them.

Rajoy told parliament last week that he’s going to make Spain’s work calendar more rational. He said, that means dealing with the high costs associated with extra-long weekends.

“We’re going to move mid-week holidays to Mondays,” he said.

Many of Spain’s holidays are like July 4th. They’re pegged to a date. So they can fall mid-week, for instance, on a Tuesday. When that happens, many companies give workers the Monday off. Or people just take Monday off, calling in sick. This month Spain had two such “four-day” weekends. That’s not including the week off at Christmas. When you add it all up, Spaniards took off nearly half of December.

Hardly what a flat economy like Spain’s needs, at least according to Spain’s business leaders.

They’re behind the push to eliminate the extra-long weekends. What’s surprising is that labor unions aren’t up in arms. In fact most working Spaniards are taking it in stride.

Take Victor Garcia, a door to door salesman in Barcelona. He said he’s enjoyed the informal perk of stretching out a long weekend. But he can live without it.

In principle, he said, abolishing the four-day long holiday weekend is a good idea. He thinks Spaniards have such high unemployment, and job insecurity as it is and they’ve got to turn things around somehow. “Working together, we’ve got to try,” he said.

In a nearby pharmacy, owner Dioni Hernandez said Spaniards have enough time off as it is.

“For every holiday we’re closed we lose a minimum of 3 per cent of our monthly business. If when there’s more than one holiday in a month, we really start to get hurt,” said Hernandez.

Spain and other southern European countries have faced criticism during this economic crisis for supposedly not working hard enough. Rajoy’s proposal no doubt seeks to counter that claim.

But is it true that southern Europeans are slackers, while Northern Europeans are more industrious? Earlier this year German Chancellor Angela Merkel assumed it was. She scolded her southern neighbors for taking more vacation than Germans while asking Germany to bail them out.

Merkel got beat up for her comments. Turns out workers in Spain, Italy and Greece on average put in more hours per year than Germans do. That’s according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

So why is Northern Europe more wealthy, less in debt? Some suggest that thrift makes the difference. Germans tend to save, while Spaniards have gone on a big borrow-and-spend spree.

With fewer days off under Rajoy’s plan, Spaniards may spend less. But there are obstacles to phasing out the four-day weekends. Spain’s powerful tourism industry is grumbling because Spaniards would spend fewer nights in resorts and hotels. And then there’s the church.

Some important religious holidays, such as the Assumption of Mary fall on the same date as each other. The government proposal to peg it to a Monday would require the blessing not only of Spanish church officials but of the Vatican itself.

Photo by Matthew Bell

Today is Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year on the Jewish calendar. And for Jews around the world, it’s a day spent at home and at synagogue to ask God for forgiveness. In Israel, the “day of atonement” means that much of the country simply stops. Stores are closed, there’s no school, no newspapers and no Israeli television. And much less traffic. In and around Tel Aviv, the holiday has turned into a festival of bicycles for children. The World’s Matthew Bell has our story.

• See more of Matthew’s photos
• More information about Yom Kippur

A couple of videos Matthew shot on the streets of Tel Aviv:

And more pictures:

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

JEB SHARP: The revelations of Iran’s nuclear facility and its missile tests may have made the holiest day of the Jewish calendar more somber than usual in Israel.  Yom Kippur is the Jewish Day of Atonement.  It began at sundown yesterday.  TV and radio stations in Israel went off the air.  There were no flights in and out of Israel’s international airport.  And nearly all businesses closed.  But The World’s Matthew Bell reports that not all of Israel came to a halt.

MATTHEW BELL:  Hundreds of Jews gathered to pray in front of the western wall in Jersualem’s old city hours before the start of Yom Kippur.  They were mostly men and boys.  The women and girls were cordoned off to one side.  They all faced the holiest site on earth for Jews, the Temple Mount.  Many rocked back and forth as they recited from books of scripture.  It was an example of the kind of religious devotion that makes Jerusalem Israel’s most pious place.  On the other side of Israel, less than an hour’s drive away, a different kind of preparation for the holiday took place, at bicycle shops.  Six-year-old Itimar was with his dad to pick up a few last-minute items.    Itimar wasn’t exaggerating.  Traffic in most of Israel completely stops for Yom Kippur.  And so the holiday has turned into a festival of bicycles for children, especially in and around Tel Aviv.  Karen Brima and her husband assembled a new Spiderman bike with training wheels for their three-year-old son.  They got it ready just in time for the big day.

BRIMA:  Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv might seem like a carnival, with all the kids on bikes.  But it’s also a solemn day.  This is when we fast and repent, and it’s the most important day of the year for the Jewish people.

BELL:  But for the young kids, who don’t fast, Yom Kippur is mostly about having fun.  By sundown, the normally traffic-clogged streets of Tel Aviv were free of cars.  That’s when the kids took over.  These kids say the best things about Yom Kippur are being able to ride as fast as they want, pop wheelies in the middle of the street, and stay up past their bedtime.  Lots of people in

Tel Aviv also go to the beach on this holiday.  But many secular Israelis here still fast and go to synagogue on Yom Kippur, even if they aren’t especially observant throughout the year.  Some people see all the bikes and the people at the beach, and are saddened by the growing secularization of Tel Aviv, but Raafi thinks it great.

RAAFI:  It is a very, very special atmosphere that suddenly, the city stops all the usual daily activity and becomes a unique capsule of quietness.  And the kids and the noise of laughter and all that is not something that is continuing the daily aspect.  Because it’s very, very different.  Usually, you have cars and the kids have to be very afraid and suddenly everything opens. It’s an amazing experience.

BELL:  Raafi says there’s something else that makes Yom Kippur special this year.  2009 is the 100^th anniversary of the official founding of Tel Aviv.

RAAFI:  We are really a fantastic place.  And every week almost you have an event that is happening here that is exciting, artistic, whatever.  You walk in the streets and see all the paintings.  So it’s a very exciting year, very strong acknowledgement of how far Tel Aviv came in terms of simply love of life and happiness and optimistic view of the future.  And Yom Kippur is simply part of the fun in that sense.

BELL:  The holiday ended tonight for many families with a meal to break the fast.  Tomorrow, Tel Aviv returns to the faster rhythms of modern-day city life.  For The World, I’m Matthew Bell in Tel Aviv.

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