- Language. Hope you have a good level of Spanish. Although you may use English in frequency regularly, many VFR pilots won’t (and some of the airports move more VFR than IFR traffics). And of course all training with the local staff will be held in Spanish. But that’s not even the most important point: imagine all the vital conversations you’ll need to hold with many workers of the airport (fire brigade, marshals, flight plan office staff, engineers…). They will be working for another company and none of them are expected to speak English, but you must understand them perfectly or your job will be harsh.
There are extremely highly paid controllers in BCN and MAD who have a very poor level of English. When things get a little bit non standard (thunderstorms for example), when controllers really need to understand what pilots are requesting, we are often greeted with silence and stuttering by confused, out of depth controllers. Like recently in Spanish airspace i was requesting both heading deviations, plus CLIMB (due to little known phenomena called mountains) - the idiot controller went quiet and then started speaking Spanish to an Iberia.
It is total madness what's happening down there, and sadly only a crash will lead to an investigation that will uncover the true depth of the crisis that is the appalling standard of Spanish air traffic controllers.