Excellent post. I as you love Spain. I am a gringo that speaks Spanish from bingeing raised on the the Mexican border and my Mexican wife.
When we travel in Spain we with rare exception do no go to the tourists areas with the exception of Madrid and their museums which are most magnificent.
We stay where the Spanish tourists stay and it is great. Wife and I speak Spanish to them and just become a Spanish speaking tourist. They do ask where I learned to speak Spanish and I explain from living in Venezuela and growing up on the border with Mexico and my wonderful Mexican wife.
I love my visits to Spain as a non standard tourist. I love going to the small villages and towns and eating in the cafes and street side vendors where no person speaks English. I must admit my very white gringo face speaking good Spanish at first surprising them. My wife’s brown Mexican face surprises them not in the least.
I like Spain a lot.
That's interesting.
I took a cruise this spring with stops in Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, and Panama. Whenever I greet someone in Spanish (I only say "Hola!"), they immediately assume I'm fluent and start to rattle off in Spanish faster than I can understand. A woman in Colombia told me that my accent is very good, and I told her that I had lived in Spain for three years. I think that even though I did not learn Spanish very well, I did manage to pick up on the accent at least passably well.
A young woman who was stationed in Spain while I was there absolutely hated it. She never went off-base, no wonder she was unhappy.