I still stick by my earlier comments regarding tuition - the methods used by the teacher\trainer can make a lot of difference, along with the amount of exposure to the language.
I believe that coming to Spain to learn the language means you can go out and immerse yourself in the language. Staying at home and doing an hour a day - or when I was at school 2 or 3 lessons of French a week - is a long hard slog. The problem I seem to have at the moment is I remember the French better than the Spanish - and I left school in 1964 and never really used it since...

My ex-workmate in London was a recent graduate from Bristol who got a 1st in politics and German

One of the first things we asked her to was call our fieldwork suppliers in Germany, in German, she said that her German wasnt good enough to do that!

My friends bothers cousin,has got a French poodle wthich mated with a German shepherd, they now live in Wales they own a Japenese car......

Yes but if they had not come we might all speak Russian now.

Pots and Kettles, seeing how the Spanish had already nicked most of it from the Central Americans.

Rough justice more like.

Maybe time the Spanish taught their students the truth.

Drake was a privateer, wasn't he? ie a licensed pirate. When the Spanish bitch that he stole 'their' gold, just ask them where they stole it from.

They didn't show up of their own accord remember.
They showed up when Germany declared war on them and were already sinking lots of their coastal shipping.
Had Britain not held on, they'd have had no European base and probably,eventually been left trying to defend their own shores without the help of superior European technology.

Yes they learn that too.

I was speaking in jest to highlight the folly of your original post.

Spanish history is pretty disgusting, just like British history is - and most of European history.

We were talking earlier why the numbers of Brits thinking of moving out to Spain appears as high as ever. It's occurred to me that the reports of a growing elderly population may be relevant. Consequently if the numbers of people approaching retirement age is increasing, then even if the percentage of those stays the same ( of those wanting to retire to Spain) then the overall number will increase. Plus the lower housing prices of many spanish costas compared with southern england could be a factor. Of course prices are high in Marbella, and low in northern England. But generally people like to retire to the sun, if they're moving away. You don't get forums dedicated to people moving to Grimsby or Hull - perhaps we should!

I went into a local ferreteria a couple of weeks ago and the girl on the cash desk was studying a textbook - it wasn't English she was learning, though, it was Chinese! There's a sign of the times if ever there was one.

Well yes, I came across a couple of language places in Madrid a couple of years back who were starting to branch out into teaching Chinese. My guess is that English will remain the world's lingua franca for at least 10-20 years, but if I'm wrong and it changes far quicker, then we could be in serious problems.

Preparing for the next world order no doubt.
If you can't beat em, join em.

Because for many it's still a dream, a dream the British public have been bombarded with for the last 30 years.

Cheap holidays to the costas reinforce the dream, sunshine, cheap booze and cigarettes
Watch place in sun, watch Rick Stein waxing lyrically about the fresh food blah blah blah.

Most of these people that want to go to Spain don't know what's happening in the UK never mind Spain. If they really knew what Spain was like at the moment then only a fool or a very wealthy man would consider it.

I guy that works for me is doing a Masters at Chichester Uni in Buisness administration, there are 14 on the course and 12 are Chinese.
He was trying to explain something to me about a branch of mathematics that he has to study, I was lost, he could barely explain it. The Chinese couldn't see what all the fuss was about apparently they studied it in high school. They are leaps and bounds ahead of the Europeans and I daresay the Americans.
I agree stevie, Chinese language is definitely more visible in British Universities especially since the pin yin method of learning was developed. Moreover pin yin is making English far easier to learn for the Chinese than it was before.

They (the yanks) regard us as their unsinkable aircraft carrier for their exclusive use just of Europe.