Upon arriving in Barcelona my first move before even getting a taxi for the hotel was to check for mobile signal strength and a data connection, immediately I was greeted with a nice strong signal and profimail and fring were immediately connected and I started receiving email over a 3G connection although this wasnt a serious indication, I was in a brand new airport anyway I still was happy enough.

A few hours latter when we were strolling over La Rambla we reached Plaça de Catalunya and found a department store called El Corte Inglés in the electronics department there was a Vodafone store and although the stuff was trying to be helpful couldn't understand the tiniest bit of English (a pattern that repeated everywhere, it seems that in Barcelona don't speak any English and a few Spanish, their actual language is Catalan). Since Irene can speak Spanish and we found a representative of Vodafone on the phone that could translate the more technical terms to the store clerks I managed to purchase a prepaid card with "unlimited" (unlimited of course meant up to 1GB of data)  HSDPA service for 7 days, the total cost was 52 Euro, I also added another 20 Euro for Voice calls in order to not have to change the SIM every time I wanted to make a call.

After installing the card and sending the activation SMS I received a message in Catalan although I registered as an English speaker and a few minutes latter the settings SMS. I immediately added a new AP Group to SmartConnect including the setup AP's in order of preference, HSDPA, 3G, GPRS.

The next hours I had a very weak 3G connection that would drop every few minutes, that day I didn't even once get an HSDPA connection. While the day was ending and on the road home the connection completely died, at the time I thought that was due to the signal not reaching the Metro tunnel but I couldn't get a connection even when we got to the Hotel, again I thought that probably that area didn't have data coverage.

The next day while we were in the same area as the day before where I had a steady connection over GPRS I decided to call Vodafone to get an explanation, it was really weird that in their IVR wasnt given an option either for english prompts or an english speaking representative. To cut this short after 6 calls I managed to reach an operator that could understand the following "I would like to speak with an English speaking representative" and she gave me another number to call.

Not totally let down I made a call to that number and was prompted by a multilanguage IVR, after sellecting english and waiting for about 15 minutes I finally heard an operator on the line BUT he still spoke spanish (or Catalan) saying the magic sentence as before I was put on hold and then send to the root of the IVR again making the selection. After 2 hours I was in a loop, I chose english and I got a spanish only speaking agent, I thought I would call it a day since I was already irritating Irene by being on the phone for so long. 

After visiting Sagrada Família I had a revelation, was I burning my voice credits? was it possible that the auto setup message I received wasnt using the correct gateway? my only problem was that Vodefone ES was of no help, to test my theory I decided to top up my account, of course the only cards I could find were of 25 Euro, deciding that at worse I would just leave spain with an account holding hundreed of hours of talk time, I bit the bullet and added the credit. After less than 5 minutes profimail, fring and gravity were again online validating my suspicion.

For the next 6 hours I would call the international support call center of Vodafone ES, if I got a spanish speaking agent I would hang up(talking about an irritating behavior :-), you cant imagine my excitement when the agent that answered on the last call was speaking something like english, after having to explain everything at least 6 times trying to use the most basic vocabulary I could I manage to convince the agent to send me the correct settings OTA unbelievably though I got the same exact settings. 

It is safe to assume that every other call for almost the whole day was a complete fail, only managing to finally piss off Irene :-p . While going back to the hotel for the night I managed to again reach another agent that could speak something resembling English, at least this time she could understand English quite well. I managed to explain the problem and was promised that I would get the correct settings soon. 

At last I had an active connection over 2.5G (GPRS) and could start replying to mail, checking the work network status and open tickets, after sending some work orders we got out for a drink, during the route to Drassanes and to a Bar we visited near Maremàgnum the connection was working, the same to the route back.

The next day of course I again didn't have a connection, not in the hotel or any place we visited including a few were I previously was connected, I again started making calls for a few hours but to no avail and I finally gave up, this was even worse than work, in general I have to speak over the phone a lot less, just to note that trying the older AP that used the voice credits didn't work either.

Lots of hours latter finally back at the Hotel I got quite pleasant surprise, when I asked the agent if she spoke English she said something in Spanish and then I heard the familiar broken "please wait", a few minutes latter I heard the agent present herself in perfect English, she informed me that because of the large volume of calls I made without getting my problems resolved they forwarded my call to an English speaking agent, outside of Spain, she couldn't tell me where she was located but she informed me she was Argentinian. She let me hold the line for 5-6 minutes to review all my calls and then requested that I would wait for a few more, finally she informed me that I would get a kind of charge back for the mistake they made with the settings they send me in the form of voice credits, I was also informed that there were general problems that day in most of Barcelona with data connections and after giving her the Post Code of the Hotel and waiting a minute or two she told me there was no coverage and there wasn't an ETA for a fix, she reassured me that I would have a proper connection from then on to any place there was a connection available.

True to her words (and I would like to thank her whoever she was) the next day I had intermittent connection, the rest of our vacation days was a little bit better but never had anything above 2G or 2.5G anywhere except for near Port Vell where I got a strong 3G signal.

Since I was on vacation I have to say that I liked Barcelona and Spanish people a lot and I think that  culturally they are very close to Greeks, if you exclude one or two instances they were extremely polite and helpful even with the language barrier.

Finally the last day while we were going to the airport I got a message from Vodafone ES informing me that I got 10 Euro credits, maybe I will use them the next time I will be in Spain:-P