> Barcelona uses heavily Catalonian language for all: trafic signs, street posters, commerce, casual conversation, television, politics... all. I wouldn't disc

> Barcelona uses heavily Catalonian language for all: trafic signs, street posters, commerce, casual conversation, television, politics... all. I wouldn't discourage the OP like that. Most of Barcelona's huge immigrant population -- Romanian, Bulgarian, Pakistani, etc. -- never learns Catalan even after two decades living there. They manage perfectly fine without Catalan, and become proficient in Castilian instead. (Of course, their children learn Catalan as they go through the local school system.) Of course, I think it would be rude for a white collar person like the OP to move to Barcelona and never learn Catalan, but he could certainly move there and get by with Castilian for the first several months.