According to Cambridge University Press, who carried out a survey of 1,700 people across Spain.
The survey shows that some areas of Spain are more desperate than others.
71% of extremeños (people from Extremadura) would give up sex for good in exchange for waking up knowing fluent English. 51% of people from La Rioja.
People aren’t stupid tho’ – only 24% think that sleeping with a Brit would help their English skills, against 20% who say the only way are classes and study, or 16% who say going abroad is the only solution.
From my own research into this area (admittedly several years out of date now), I’d say the 24% figure is rather overstated.
9.7 out of 10 British people have given up “received pronunciation”. Only 3% use it; therefore fluent English is as prevalent as rocking horse $h1t.
The hoi polloi use estuary English, regional accents &/or dialects. I ignore them. ;<)
Trudgill, Peter (8 December 2000). "Sociolinguistics of Modern RP". University College London.
I think “fluent English” is meant as grammatically correct English, not RP.
Since most Spaniards are now learning from Richard Vaughin and his machine speaking friends, I expect to see a generation of Cali-for-ni-a speaking Spaniards expand across the globe…