@Endoftether2000 I truly don't want to suggest you are inflexible, have a closed mind, or fixed ideas, (all of which isn't impossible, in other forums such as House of Commons) but what I do suspect is you are probably a great worker (again, unlike any M/P I ever heard of).
I agreed with you the Spanish worker should not dump part of her workload and scarper.
It is unlikely someone like you can comprehend the amount of skiving, shirking work dodging, and 'presenteeism' hiding in plain sight in an outdated communal office space. You are (I guess) whirling round working hard. You see one person's coat on the back of a chair, another group of colleagues chatting, several other people busily typing away at their keyboards. All is for the best in that best of all possible worlds, except that out of the entire workforce, you might be the single person putting in a week's work.
The average of thirteen hours was PRE covid19, on a self reported survey of two thousand full time office workers who all turned up in their various olden style communal offices, from Monday to Friday, nine to five. Turning up at the building did not. not, not involve doing work for the employer.
The people 'employed' but with nothing to do, or no intention of doing it, always greatly outnumber the ones (such as you?) who search out work and would leave if not busy. Most of us will have noticed it. Alexei Sayle included it in a set, with autobiographical detail of being put on the payroll of a council. He mentioned that his section of the department employed seven (or nine?) people, to do a workload needing one or two.
People who are 'nipping out of the office' may do it for days at a time, while still physically inside the communal office building. On the other hand, people who are determined not to slack off their work (like you?) are the ones who would answer every work call, all day, despite not being inside an old style communal office. You must be pretty switched on, to be in the senior position you have, so the concept of 'presenteeism' won't have escaped your attention.
The most extreme need to work from home I ever encountered was a senior laboratory worker, whose particular speciality was vital for the local health service. Her standard and speed of work astonished her own manager, (a friend of ours) who couldn't compete, and absolutely couldn't run the service without her. He was terribly worried, because she was reaching a point of having to give up the work she loved, to stay home to keep an eye on her mother.
At times, he loaned her his own microscope, so she could work from home, extremely fast, because all she needed was a microscope, and the slides which needed inspecting. (All she needed was to nip in to the hospital laboratory at intervals to collect each new supply of work, which in her case was equivalent to several other workers put together)
If she tried to work in the communal workplace, her output dropped disastrously, because she was desperately anxious about her senile mother, who could have been setting the house on fire in her absence. At home, she knew when mum was settled happily watching t.v., so she could speed through her work uninterrupted and free of worry, then be ready to go and attend to the old lady as and when needed. Multitasking is not rare, for women. Inflexible management would have lost this brilliant worker, rather than letting her WFH. Her boss, of course, knew perfectly well that forcing her to turn up each day to sit in a line of people looking down microscopes was a way to reduce her output, or, soon, to lose her altogether.
(I doubt I've convinced you, have I?)