I rarely post in this forum, as I am not professional flight crew. However, as I do a lot of my flying in Spain, I feel compelled to contribute to this thread.
FWIW had the following a few days ago. Out of LEZL eastbound VFR in my spamcan, squawk assigned and box working. ATZ come on in English advising of ‘commercial traffic’ going into LEJR at an altitude well above me. No probs. The Spanish (major airline) guy comes on – in Spanish, of course – and complains to ATC that he hasn’t got me on his TCAS. ATC assures him all’s well (in Spanish) and provides traffic info (in English) for me. So far, so good. Now this tosser of a pilot, knowing that his potential traffic is speaking English, continues to blather on in Spanish. Great. I, btw, speak fluent Spanish, but not the full ATC phraseology, which the chap wasn’t using anyway, so that didn’t really matter. Seville APP remains calm and reassures the guy that there’s no conflict (there wasn’t), we all carry on and live to fly another day....
Lesson? Don’t blame everything bad in Spanish airspace on the guys and gals at ATC, at least down here (LEMG, LEZL, etc) they are doing a pretty good job, also dealing with a lot of student pilots - and boy, have I heard Brits and others doing their ATP in this area stammering gibberish on the radio!
I venture to say that the big problem around here tend to be the Spanish pilots (sorry guys, yes, that's you at the pointy end!) who insist on speaking Spanish and even while doing so rarely seem to bother to adhere to any ICAO phraseology. Frankly, you hear some amazing exchanges. Can sometimes be quite funny, but certainly not good for situational awareness.
In a former life, I worked as translator/interpreter. Having to juggle two languages constantly (as in: every other sentence) is challenging enough, now doing that in front of a radar screen trying to keep the aluminium from hitting each other and/or the ground would overwhelm a lot of people. I'm actually sometimes surprised how well ATC here cope.
Alas, it will probably take a big smoking hole in the ground for someone to wake up and stop this ‘national language’ idiocy.