However, you should not ignore Catalan culture and history, otherwise it's no possible, for example, to understand Gaudi's architecture or why F.C.Barcelona, our soccer team, is more than a club. Can you imagine a trip to Glasgow not being aware of the existence of Scotland? Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia and not a Spanish city.
Many people living in Barcelona are fluent in English, so I don't think you're going to have any big problems at all. However, it'd be very helpful to you to learn a few useful Catalan expressions, you can look up on this site:
http://www.ielanguages.com/catalan.html
It is a bilingual community, more or less half of the residents use catalan as their mother tongue, but absolutely everyone speaks spanish. You'll be fine.
Barcelona is a great city!
Almost every local in Barcelona speaks Spanish.
I would suggest that you ignore Catalan (apart from a few phrases to be polite) as it messes up your Spanish.
Have a great time!
First, you will be able to get by, because your teachers are giving you a tour...
Second, everyone speaks castellano, and you'll be just fine. A couple of phrases in catalán, and you'll make people very happy.
I'm going to be travelling to Spain as part of a trip teachers at my school do, and one of the places we are stopping is Barcelona. I know that both Catalan and Spanish are spoken there, and that Catalan is similar to Spanish, so will I be able to get by easily without knowing any Catalan? I don't have a huge interest in learning it, but I'm pretty fluent in Spanish. I was told by the teachers that I should be fine, but I just wanted to check because neither of them are fluent in either language. Anyone who has been there? Thanks.
