Is there no future in Spain's dreaming?

Lying back on the soft hotel bed, staring sleepily at the ceiling, my thoughts are with my colleagues in London. It is just after lunch. As they lumber up the stairs from the staff canteen, or walk back into the office with a sandwich in their hands, I am preparing for a siesta. Should I feel guilty?

An early summer heatwave has struck Madrid and, already, we must all confront that annual dilemma: how do you survive when the heat stops you going to bed until 1am, cutting cruelly into the daily sleep quota?

Much of Madrid still shuts down in the early afternoon. Civil servants' phones ring off the hook at ministries, and shopkeepers draw their blinds at 2pm as they head home for two- to three-hour lunch breaks and, when needed, a refreshing snooze.

But office workers have been robbed of their traditional siesta by the introduction of so-called "American" working hours, with their meagre one-hour lunch breaks.

Inventive Madrilenos find their own ways around this problem. Juan Carlos, a designer for a publishing company, takes his siesta in the company bathroom, sitting back to front on the toilet, his head resting on the cistern.

"The only trouble," he says, "is that it leaves a tell-tale red mark on your forehead."

So powerful is the demand for siestas, despite the working hours imposed by the multinationals, that new ventures are springing up to meet it. That is why I am lying on this bed at the Hotel Palace. The management here has decided that what Madrid's stressed-out executives most miss is that afternoon nap. On offer is lunch and, afterwards, up to four hours in a soft bed with the blinds drawn.

"It is especially popular for those who have to come into the city centre for a day's work. They eat here and then go up for a rest before their afternoon meetings," explains a hotel flunky.

They call their beds "celestial" and, as I lie back and imagine drifting off into heavenly sleep, I can see why. But this is just a visit. I can't afford the 120 plus euros it would cost to snooze in this room until 6pm.

I try, instead, the downmarket option. Masajes por mil, literally "massages for a fiver", is a massage-cum-beauty-parlour franchise which also sells siestas.

At a city centre branch I am introduced to what looks like a hi-tech cross between an orthopaedic chair and some medieval stocks, covered in padded lilac plastic. I lean into a small round face rest and close my eyes.

Moments later hands are caressing my back and fingers are being pressed against my scalp. I manage to mentally tick off the times I got up to take a four-year-old his glass of water last night before the lights go out in my head.

Half an hour later I am woken up. I feel dazed and slightly grumpy. I could have stayed here for hours. "Half an hour is best," explains the woman in charge. "Otherwise you don't wake up properly afterwards." She takes 10 euros off me, tells me that most of her siesta clients also have small children, and sends me dizzily on my way.

Emperor Carlos V, who invented the siesta, also kept it short. He slept sitting up, clutching a key in his hand. When he was so deeply asleep that the key fell out of his hands and hit the floor with a clatter, he considered the siesta over.

Sleep scientists at Madrid's Jimenez Diaz Institute agree that short snoozes are best. In a recent report they recommended siestas of between 10 and 40 minutes a day as a solution to the city's chronic problem of sleep deprivation.

So it's official, then. Siestas are good for you - and that makes them guilt-free.