Hello,
We are planning a trip to Spain in February (stay in Madrid and Seville with day trips). We will stay in an apartment in both cities and shop for food at local markets. Our only Spanish ability will be from a phrase book. Will we have trouble managing (shopping, tickets for trains and buses) in Spain? We recently spent 3 weeks in Italy (Rome and Florence) with the same limited language skills and we had no problems. In addition to English we speak German and a little French.

I did find Spain to have less English spoken than Italy and other parts of Europe but I still didn't have any significant problems. Despite taking it in college, my Spanish is pretty nonexistent. Do the people you are dealing with for the apartments speak English? That would be my biggest concern, making your needs known to them if they don't speak English. I stayed in hotels and the staff had enough English, and I had enough Spanish to get the ideas across. But if you don't have any problems there's really not much communication that needs to take place in hotels - the usual please, thank you, smile, etc. But with apartments you'll need a little more. If they don't speak English I would definitely brush up on the phrases you think you'll need. You can also write out what you want to say if they don't get your pronunciation.

As for shopping, restaurants,etc. I found I did fine with pointing and gestures and a smile (and please, thank you and a few other key phrases). But I definitely did notice significantly less English than in most of the places I've been in Italy. Still, I've been to Spain three times in the last two years so it obviously didn't stop me from going and having a great time

I agree with PP.
Don't expect the person selling train or bus tickets to speak English ( or other languages) - write down the destination and time and show it to them.
Spanish people are very nice and helpful .

I use Pimsleur CDs in my car driving to and from work to learn the basics of the language for countries I am visiting. They cost less than $20. and are an excellent way to have enough of the language to function.

Yes, you will experience some difficulties if you are staying in an apartment and do not speak Spanish, but it shouldn't be too bad. A good phase book will help, but you should try to learn a few basic words and phases just to be polite. Something like the Lonely Planet Phase Book will help get you through.

You’ll find a number of major signs in English at the airports, train and bus stations, but not everything will be translated. The agents will try to help, but it would be better to have a basic understanding of some of the terms used such as: arrive (llegar), departure (salida), days of the week, etc., if you are trying to read a schedule.

No significant problems, a problem though was for me Cataluña where the names of cities in the highways are in Calalan and sometimes differ from the Spanish name.
Anyone going for instance to Girona better be careful because I know the name is very different ( I forgot it)
Around the world I have found locals that hate to show they know English, i.e. the hotel in Bonn, shopkeepers in Montreal, etc but as a rule I do not think not knowing a language is a big, big problem. Surely a trip is really enjoyable when you speak well the language you are visiting but for basics hands and a word here and word there in other languages will do.
On the contrary others love to show the little English they know.
As an curiosity I always found out that when an Italian tells you he or she speaks French it turns out that 8 out of 10 times is awful. So i stick to my English and hands when in Italy and the little Italian I know.

Thanks everyone for the replies. They are very helpful.

I took a free 12 week online language seminar to learn some basic Italian before my trip to Rome, and will be completing the Spanish course before I travel there next fall. They send you 2 lessons each week, and each lesson takes about 20 minutes or so to complete. If I remember correctly, all the lessons are also available online so you can complete them at a faster pace if you want. I realize you don't have 12 weeks before you leave, but you can get get a good grasp of some basics before you go with this website:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/lj/

As long as you have a good Spanish/English dictionary you should be OK. We never had problems with hotels, restaurants or sights (but then we both have old high school Spanish) but grocery stores could be more of a challenge. But - there are a lot of similarities to French - at least in nouns (spelling, not pronunciation) so that should be a help.

I didn't find it to be too much of a problem. Most folks spoke only limited English, but I didn't find it that much worse than France or Italy. I do speak some very bad Spanish, so that might have helped, but all in all, you should be fine.

Personally, I never bother with even a phrase book, even when traveling to countries where it might be useful. I've never had a problem.

Hundreds of thousands of other non Spanish speaking Europeans visit every year, and learn little more than hola. They all survive.
The first time I went to La Palma I had a phrase book with me, as I spoke no Spanish and even managed to get some cough medicine at the pharmacy using it.
I have always found the Spanish to be very patient with my feeble attempts at speaking their language.

TG only uses english and shouts when others don't understand a word. It helps because many times it scares the heck out of them. So they give him whatever he wants for free. Not nice, but working.

Tickets for trains or local transit come from machines which can be set to work in 3-5 languages.

Food comes from supermarkets with scanner cash registers and displays for the amount due. If you have to do buy (and carry) all your food and beverages every day, you will probably want to use a next door supermarket instead of a "local market" 2km away anyway (except for some fresh fish or meat).

The more touristy the restaurants are (like in the old town of Madrid or around the Cathedral in Sevilla), the more you will be able to get along in English (or German). Otherwise your phrase book may help you, though I doubt that you will find every type of tapas in it. Nevertheless, I doubt that you will run into any major troubles in either city.

Since you will be staying in regions of Spain where Castilian (or what you would call "Spanish&quotis spoken, you won't have to worry about the other languages.

Graziella5b: Girona IS the Catalan name, by the way. In Castilian it would be Gerona -- not THAT much different, IMO ;-)

Hi Cowboy not that much of a different if you are reading a book or looking at a map but if you by pass the right exit at 60-70 miles per hour it can be for me.
May be you are much cleverer than me.

I am sure you are and that you would not have written
different instead of difference LOL, sorry about that...

If you had seen me last week driving from Málaga to Barcelona and fighting with maps and street signs in Castilian only, bi-lingual in Castilian and Catalan/ Valenciano, and Catalan only, you would NEVER assume that I was more clever