FernandoFF thank you for this wonderful comment. There are many Germans who speak very well Spanish. Germans learn up to three languages or more in school. Of course English, but as well Russian, Italian, French, Spanish,... depending on where the school is. I personally would like to see each educated European to be able to speak at least 3 languages: the own mother tongue, English and another European language of choice. Unfortunatly, there are some EU contries who decided to take out languages from the syllabus in school so students can get away with only speaking English, not learning anything about the cultural diversity in Europe. It is the diversity that makes Europe a strong and competitve place. And to dive into a culture one should really be able to communicate a little bit in the language of the country.
Concerning you last comment, if you live in an EU country of course you need to be able to communicate at least on a basic level in the language of the state. There are more people like you, especially among the young generation, who can communication in 4-5 european languages, because they lived in various EU countries.
Yes let's open up the minds for a "united Europe" and hopefully it will be as easy as moving within a state to move to the neighbouring country.
As a person bred in the use of several languages, understanding the relevance of English in business and new technologies, we feel we also have the duty to point out that in the USA itself, the demographic change is forcing the introduction of a second language as co-official, and I'm afraid in a couple of decades, there may even be a third one.
Curios that we in the European Union, with over 500M citizens and over 20 languages have not learned to avail of the strength of multi-language use whilst avoiding the pitfalls of a Tower of Babel. To site one example, Spanish was taken out of the list of co-official languages for patent registration. Curuiosly, a lot of medical & scientific research developed by Spanish doctors and researchers have to be translated as only 1 out of 5 of these professionals has command of specialised English.
Shamefully, German companies thrirsty for efficient technicians force candidates to undergo training in German language as their own staff even has difficulty using english. Would it not be better they first learned Spanish or Italian or Portugues, if they want out talented youth to work in their teams. In Spain, we professionals (I'm now retired) who worked in the European scheme could communicate in at least 4 official languages.
Let's open up our minds if we want to be a "united Europe".