I’m a 21yr old Irish student who is due to finish my degree shortly. I’m thinking of working in Madrid for the summer, I have spent some time in Spain before and have a bit of basic Spanish but it’s not great and am wondering how hard it would be to get work that doesnt involve speaking much Spanish (e.g Irish bars, tourist restaurants etc). I’m good at languages so would probably catch on quickly but am I wasting my time going over there without a decent level of Spanish? Any replies are greatly appreciated.

You want to jump into a job market with such a high unemployment rate with little knowledge of the local language? Good luck, but my guess is it’s a long shot.

How many bars in Ireland are there that employ non English speakers.

Same as Spain, the clients may be English but your employer is likely to be Spanish.

There are many english speakers trying the same thing, add them to other EU and Non EU peeps and your chances are in the low numbers unless you know someone who knows someone.