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I am going to be in Madrid for a week or so next summer. Mostly work, but probably also some free time. I have been studying Spanish for a while now, and I got to the level when I am mostly understanding written text, at least up to the newspaper level (though some rarer words are missing, but mostly I get through), but when I listen to the radio it's about 50/50 chance I can understand. I know most people these - especially in tourist places and hotels and so on - would speak English likely, but I think it'd be cool if I could speak Spanish to them - and especially understand them speaking Spanish to me. Any suggestions about how could I increase the likelihood of this happening?
My experience has been that people in Spain react pretty well to being addressed in (competent) Spanish by visitors. In fact this has been my experience in every Spanish speaking country. Especially since English isn't anywhere near as common in Spain (and Italy) as Germany or the Nordics (I suspect France as well, but they'll never admit it). Depending on how you learned Spanish, you might want to brush up on some of the word useage and phrases common to European Spanish. I've found the Madrileños fairly easy to understand once you get used to the seseo. You can watch Spanish news broadcasts to get an idea. Other parts of Spain I've not done as well understanding them, mostly Andalucia, despite it being my favorite part. Most educated Andalucians can switch to Castillian without issue though.
I've only been to France a couple of times for work, and of course IT professionals all spoke very decent English, but from the people in service (waiters, ticket clerks, etc.) it was very much hit or miss. Some spoke absolutely zero English and basically refused any attempt to bridging the language gap. Once I had to use ticket machine instead of the ticket booth because the clerk refused to understand anything (which is kinda weird in a railway station - they must have significant tourist traffic there) and once I had to go to another restaurant because they didn't have any non-French menu and refused any attempt to discuss the order in English (it was before Google Translate time of course). It wasn't too bad in general, I found my way around to food and transport fine eventually, but I got the impression that some people in France definitely don't want anything to do with English. In Germany I had an opposite experience - we once got lost on a train station and asked some German ladies (in English) about it and they gave us super-detailed explanations and refused to part with us until making sure we made to our train, and their English wasn't that great (better than my German for sure!) but they were extremely enthusiastic about using it. We felt a bit uncomfortable that we took much more of their time than we planned to.
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