I don’t nap. I never have. I come from a culture that associates mid-day sleeping with either toddlers or people on the brink of a breakdown. But Spain? Spain says sleep whenever you want, wherever you want, with zero shame, because life is a long dinner and you need to pace yourself.
And honestly? That sounded magical. The idea of just clocking out of reality for a few hours in the middle of the day, like a computer rebooting, felt like the missing piece in my chaotic attempt at adjusting to life here.
So I tried it. I fully committed.
And I am here to tell you: siestas are not naps. Siestas are portals. You do not rest during a siesta. You vanish. Time ceases to exist. Reality bends. You wake up with no memories of the life you lived before you closed your eyes.
Let me explain.
The Preparation
I had done my research. Spaniards don’t just nap. They orchestrate naps. There is a whole setup involved.
Step one: eat a big lunch. This was the easy part because every meal here is a five-act opera. I had a comically large plate of rice, an unnecessary second helping of bread, and wine because Spain encourages terrible decisions before noon.
Step two: make your nap cave. Spaniards take siesta darkness seriously. I shut the blinds, turned off my phone, and mentally prepared to disappear from the world.
Step three: set an alarm. I told myself one hour. One responsible, adult hour. Enough to feel refreshed, not enough to wake up as a different person in a new decade.
I closed my eyes. I surrendered.
The Aftermath
I woke up in hell.
First of all, it was dark. But not normal dark. Apocalyptic, end-of-days dark. My first thought was I have slept until next winter. My second thought was I don’t remember who I am.
I sat up too fast, which was a mistake, because my body refused to re-enter consciousness at the same speed my brain was demanding. I felt like I had been in a coma for seventeen years. My limbs weren’t responding properly. My mouth was dry like I had spent the last four hours fighting for my life in a desert.
I reached for my phone. I had 17 missed messages. No, wait—some of these were from yesterday. Had I slept for a whole day? What YEAR was it?
The confusion was so real that for a full thirty seconds, I was genuinely unsure which country I was in. I could have woken up in an abandoned hotel room in Prague with no passport and a cryptic note written on my hand and it would have felt just as reasonable as what was happening.
I stumbled out of bed and into the living room, where my phone immediately pinged with a message:
“Are you okay??”
Oh no. That’s never a good text.
I checked the time. 7:30.
AM?? PM?? WHICH SEVEN THIRTY IS THIS??
I yanked open the blinds like a panicked vampire trying to figure out if I was about to die from sunlight. Outside, the sky was that weird, unclear color where it could be early evening or the very end of the world.
I needed an anchor. Something that would tell me what reality I had woken up into.
The street. The street would have answers.
I peered down at the sidewalk, hoping for clues. There were people casually walking around. Okay, good. It wasn’t the apocalypse. But were they heading to dinner? Or just starting their day?
Then I saw it.
A man in a suit. Holding a beer. Casually drinking on the sidewalk.
I exhaled. Ah. Spain. It was evening. I was not a time traveler. I had just been completely obliterated by my own nap.
The Lesson Learned
I have never felt the same after that siesta.
I don’t know what it is about them, but they are different here. They hit like medically induced comas. They bend space-time. They transport you to a place where alarms don’t matter and your organs briefly forget their responsibilities.
And the worst part? I woke up MORE tired. How? How does that happen?
Siestas are not rest. They are spiritual experiences that you may not return from.
And yet—somehow, against all logic—I know I’ll do it again
