depends on how small the place is, but it's the same here... down the road from me is one cafe where only the youngest daughter of the proprietor speaks english, her dad and her big sister both barely know a word

the guy up the street from me, where i go most often because it's 3 minutes walk, he speaks pretty good english, but he was living in south africa until the late 90s when all that shit broke out and the blacks were hunting the whites (i have known others, and there is a lot of portuguese south africans here in my area)

and the other cafe, further up the hill, they speak zero english at all, they have a daughter who sometimes works behind the bar but i don't think she speaks english either... more often one or two of the patrons are the ones who speak english there, and again, many more times than not they are more or less refugees from south africa

a lot of people in europe speak servicable spanish... the locals you will find mostly it's the youngest ones who speak it well and very often they were both taught at school and possibly worked in england for a time, a LOT of people from all over europe in their late 20s early 30s these days did a few year stint working in england, so many of them know english, or they watched american movies a lot as kids and learned from that, and second most common second language is german, gastarbeiter etc

welcome to europe! 

 also, haha romania, ok... yes, balkans people all tend to speak better english than the southwest europeans, mainly because actually more people in the world speak spanish than english, or at least it used to be this way

there is a strong migratory conection between balkans and the british islands, i mean, you probably know about bagpipes and roses and shipka tea and probably some french words are in your language such as etage and parter (well, in serbia they say sprat and prvi sprat, but etage and parter is used in bulgaria)

the other thing is that both romania and bulgaria have very vibrant telecoms industries, and i know that bulgarians and romanians are very competitive about this... the bulgarian urban network infrastructure was mostly built out in teh first place by gangsters selling access to pirate movies haha 

 It does seem like it.

I remember when I went to France, as a teenager, for a Rugby tournament.

We were spread to go live at the families of local players.

The ones we stayed with, both parents and grandparents spoke English with us and we're extremely friendly and helpful.

My other teammates were not so lucky, as many French people don't like to speak English, even if they can. At least that's what I heard. 

 We're in a very touristic area, next to the beach, outside of Reus. Despite this, people seem to speak very little to no English.

We've been to Portugal too and it was much easier to communicate with them in English.

In Greece, where we go multiple times a year, even in a small village, the old people talk English.

I guess it's a cultural thing, but I was a bit shocked, given how many Brits have Spain as their main holiday destination. 

 might be that brits aren't holidaying in spain so much as they were a decade ago, that would explain the decline in local english

i know for sure there has been a dramatic rise in it here in Madeira and the Canaries are actually british territory for some time now 

 Could very well be the case.

I still haven't visited Madeira, but it's on my ASAP list  

 it's pretty nice here, but a bit weird as well

you have to do Espetada Madeirense preferably at a restaurant up in the hills, i can recommend the one near Santa Cruz (near the airport) called Talho Juza, really nice atmosphere, pretty place, just the other side of the dry southern biome and into a wetter climate as it is higher up)

i've been to these types of restaurant down near the coast near Caniso and the prices are astronomical and the quality, meh, and the atmosphere is garbage in comparison

from what i've seen, it's kinda nice in the general Funchal/Sao Martinho area, but you aren't really seeing the best parts unless you go further up the mountains and you must see some of the north side of the island, i can definitely recommend Ponta Delgada and Seixal, as i understand it Calheta is very nice too, and Santana is kinda more commercial, it might be nice i just never been there, it's on a high plateau, so not as much seaside action as those two places i mentioned... Sao Vicente is nice too, it's very provincial, and as i said you'll probably find a lot less english speakers here, this is kinda like farm district 

 That's good to know 😃