Dinner (la Cena), is served so late you might as well think of it as getting a head start on tomorrow's eating! 9 o'clock is the absolute earliest you can possibly consider eating.
No joke.
Eating before 9 o'clock in Iberia is equivalent to eating at 4:30 in south Florida: only your grandparents are doing it! The typical hour to eat is not an hour, but rather 9:30 to 11:00.
But, don't go slack jawed if you call a restaurant and can't get seated until 11:30 or midnight. Not the most frequent hour, but in a chic restaurant on the weekends it can happen. But do know that Spaniards don't usually eat as much for dinner and it can, counter intuitively, be more expensive than lunch. With decent frequency Madrileños go out for Tapas instead of a traditional sit down meal.
