I was just in Italy and Spain with my wife and some friends.

Interestingly, Italians would quickly switch to English, sometimes even when we tried to speak to them in our rudimentary Italian. Spaniards, on the other hand, would patiently let us struggle through our survival Spanish.

I was wondering why that is. Perhaps it's because there are more Spanish-speakers in the world than Italian-speakers. In Madrid, most of the tourists appeared to be from other Spanish-speaking countries, whereas in Italy, there was a more diverse mix. Perhaps it's simply more necessary to have some English in Italy, as it is the lingua franca in Europe between people who don't share any other languages in common.