Jlms,
A nice balanced post; hope you slept well!
I enjoy flying into BCN - the controllers are generally unbiased and will not vector us around the skies too much to allow a spanish aircraft to get 3 miles in front of us! It happens of course, but not as much as Madrid!
The ground controllers especially earn my respect - they look out of the window before giving instructions, they help me when I take a wrong turn on the new taxiways and they speak english whenever there is a deconfliction between us and another spanish aircraft. Again, sadly not the case in Madrid.
But thats how respect is earned; a professional job done in a professional manner. Such people will get my support in disputes such as this.