The Spanish government is considering moving its clocks back an hour to Greenwich Mean Time, abandoning the time zone it joined under the Franco dictatorship in a show of allegiance to Hitler’s Germany.

Labour Minister Fátima Báñez told parliament on Monday that the government was studying the impact of moving Spain back an hour from Central European Time (CET) to GMT, a move which is felt would help workers to make an earlier start in the morning.

Spain is the farthest West of all countries on CET after General Franco switched the country to the same time as Germany during World War Two in 1940.

In Santiago de Compostela, the capital of the westernmost region on the Spanish mainland, Galicia, this week’s official sunrise time is 8.56am, meaning that children are starting their school day in complete darkness.

Out in the Atlantic, the Canary Islands, like Spain’s neighbour Portugal, already use GMT.

José Luis Casero, president of the National Commission for the Rationalisation of Spanish Schedules, welcomed the government’s move to strike at “the heart of the question of Spain’s late-hours culture in which prime time on the television runs from 10pm to midnight”.

Mr Casero said that the change should take place in March 2017 or 2018 when Spain would simultaneously comply with the European directive in putting clocks forward an hour and repeal Franco’s decree, with the net result that Spain would be on BST instead of Central European Summer Time.