ATC Watcher.....thanks for the proff reply.
This thread is going slightly off topic. Lets face the facts here. Lots of contributers have had multiple incidents in spain with ATC. We can compare it to UK, China or Mongolia. It doesn't matter. There are problems with spanish ATC. What are the problems?
Well IMHO using their native tongue is not CAUSING this problems. It makes the problems worse by confusing some of the parties involved after a problem occurs, but i dont think it is the root cause.
Let me call the pot black and run for cover
Some of the cause of my frustrations is either lack of intersest of bad communication within ATC. eg when you get cleared for an arrival and told which app/rwy to expect by control. Then getting handed over at FL150 and told there is a non-precision on the other end in use!! Do they realise how much problems this causes us?? Yeah Yeah, dont give me all this gab about just taking up the hold till its set up. Everyother ATC in northern eulope from east to west (poland to ireland) is able to co-ordinate this. But the spanish and the italians cant.
Next of all, I have seen to many "loss of situational awareness" by tower controllers in my short time as a pilot (since the 90's). On occasions (much much more than one) i have had to tell atc that i could not do the approach i was cleared to do because a naviagtion aid was not working. There was no understanding from the controller that the notamed inop nav aids render the app unusable. I have had a loss of separaton on a number of occasions caused by bad atc controlling. (Sounds like an off the cuff comment...trust me its not. To give you any detail would immediatly reveal my identity to my management team as they would all be very aware of one particular incident. Sure, the blame was placed directly on atc, but what has changed...thats the problem.)
I cant believe there are people saying if you think there is a problem in spain then you have no experience. Thats rubbish. Do you want us all to measure ourselves against somalian ATC? Fools. Measure ourselves agains British or German ATC. Aim high. Im afraid that spanaish (and italian) atc is not up to THAT standard and it is causing me, and a lot of other pilots, problems. REAL PROBLEMS.