Immersive Spanish learning: Finding my voice in Mallorca with Trustlates.
After sixteen years of living in Spain, it’s a question I hear a lot: 'So, I guess you’re fluent in Spanish now?' And honestly, it’s a question I’ve come to dread.
Because the truth is, no, I’m not.
I didn’t come to Spain on a language exchange or as a student. I arrived as a pioneering remote worker, employed full time - juggling work, life, and a young family while struggling to prove that working from anywhere was viable, long before reliable Wi-Fi and broadband were the norm. It was challenging and difficult, and my only leisure time outside of work was spent on the family life that was the whole point of being there.
Over time, I did what many migrants do: I found ways to manage daily life in Spain without becoming fully fluent. Technology, trusted providers, translators: all these tools helped me get things done. I learned the contextual vocabulary I needed to pick my way through schools, taxes, medical services etc. I know I can negotiate a meat-free meal just about anywhere, and navigate unavoidable officialdom with no more trauma than the next person…
And yes, of course, I also took classes.
Online, offline, private, groups, free local authority offers. Always started with the best intentions - and then interrupted by life: business travel, health challenges, complications, which caused me to miss a few classes in a row and not be worth returning and disrupting a group which had been working consistently together.
I would be the one dashing in late, trying to wrap up a call, and not a clue what I missed last week when I was at an event the other end of Europe, which really wasn’t fair on the rest of the group sat with their notebooks out ready and actually doing the homework exercises and practice. Cue another class I slunk away from, always just before we reached point of doing the subjunctive.
So there remained a huge gap, between the competency I wanted to achieve, and where I actually was.
Hit me with an unexpected phone call, or a conversation outside of my narrow zones of experience, and that gap remains painfully obvious.
I am a storyteller, and it’s always been the case that this gap also manifests between natural curiosity and my limit of conversation. It’s inhibited me from developing the kind of meaningful friendships I would like to have with local people, and the richer conversations - the kind which go beyond facts and simple exchanges. As I run out of vocabulary and see yet another potentially interesting acquaintance turn away, I bite my tongue, instead of running after them calling out, “wait, hang on, I have ideas! I have opinions! I want to discuss current affairs, and feelings, and perceptions, and abstractions, share my legendary sense of humour…”
But I can’t blame anyone for thinking I have nothing more to contribute, no more thoughts in my head - why should they make the effort, when I can go no further with developing the conversation to where I want it to be?
Professional capacity building, and new possibilities for Remote Work Europe
The gap became even more obvious last year, when I delivered my first business presentation in Spanish at a conference in Alicante. What should have been a straightforward keynote on remote work trends in Spain turned into a daunting exercise in reading from a script, struggling to convey my points as naturally as I would in English. I couldn’t meaningfully take part in the panel afterwards, and found the whole process completely draining. As a professional speaker, that was a humbling experience (and one which brought new respect for every speaker I have ever watched presenting their ideas in second-language English, incidentally.)
For me it totally underscored the stark difference between everyday survival Spanish, and the professional fluency required to confidently present, negotiate, and network. Spain is my chosen home, and I want to make a difference here, a difference I know remote work could make, in contexts from disaster resilience to rural repopulation. I can’t do any of this without the necessary capacity to influence decision makers and gatekeepers in enterprises and government, and I definitely can’t do that without better Spanish.
Determined to change things this year, I sought a different kind of learning experience, one that would push me far beyond my comfort zone. Enter Carolina Fernandez Bravo and her curated Spanish immersion experience in Mallorca. I’ll link to more of her resources below, but for now, let me tell you about the experience itself.
The setup was simple yet intense: four days of speaking nothing but Spanish in a small, international group led by Carolina. We explored Mallorca, participated in workshops, and shared stories while completely immersed in the language. There was no safety net, no slipping back into English, and no fellow Brits to bail me out - that was the whole point.
The structure of the programme was intense, and well-thought-out. We didn’t sit around in a classroom conjugating verbs. Instead, Carolina integrated language learning with hands-on activities: a cooking workshop, a craft session with Mallorquín basket weaving, and discussions about history and culture, while also exploring the beautiful natural and cultural offers of the island. We were learning through doing, through tasting, through touching.
Weaving words into meaningful conversation and connection
For me, the weaving workshop was unexpectedly powerful. As I clumsily worked with the palm fronds, I couldn’t help but think about the old women in the mountains who had been doing this for decades, following a generational collaborative process to co-create unique artifacts that would last a lifetime. As we stumbled through explanations and instructions in Spanish, we also shared stories, about why we were there, what we hoped to gain, and how learning a language in adulthood can feel both exciting and deeply frustrating. It wasn’t just about making a basket; it was about connecting with the local culture, using my hands while grappling with unfamiliar vocabulary.
Maybe there’s something too about the mind/body connection, and using different muscles and parts of the brain which are unfamiliar and feel so clumsy in the conscious incompetence stage, while you watch the experienced experts’ fluid fingers flying… A powerful metaphor for my awkward and wonky communication, compared with the effortlessness I sought.
By the end of the four days, we’d shared a lot more than words. We’d shared our stories, our reasons for learning Spanish, our struggles with language, our small triumphs. And yes, there was a little graduation supper to mark the end of it all.
But the real question remains: Did it work?
Of course, I didn’t walk away bilingual. This was a brief experience - and I reflected on what it must have been like for my daughters all those years ago, dropped from a great height into Spanish schooling. They were totally fluent within a few weeks, but what could 4 days realistically offer?
Most importantly for me, I walked away feeling more confident, more willing to jump into conversations without overthinking every grammatical nuance. Carolina’s focus was less perfection and more communication: ways to engage, how to make small talk, how to respond naturally even if you don’t have the perfect words at hand. Having long made my living through mastery of my own language, the challenge is so often overcoming that inhibition. I’d rather keep my mouth shut than express ideas imperfectly, if I know the grammar is wrong or the exact expression is out of reach.
I really need to keep my practice going, and keep challenging the fear of sounding stupid or wrong when I am failing to explain myself exactly as I want to. And while I still need to learn the grammar properly at some point, the most important thing is that I keep talking.
The confidence to converse
For me, that was the real takeaway. The immersion helped me break through the wall of self-consciousness. It wasn’t about mastering the subjunctive; it was about feeling like I belonged in a conversation rather than watching it from the outside. And that sense of belonging is what makes the struggle to learn a language feel worthwhile, that makes travel worthwhile. Choosing to live and work in a culture and environment different to where chance led you to be born, and to embrace all the possibilities the world has to offer.
So while I am not quite thinking or dreaming in Spanish, I do think that some of my inner monologue has flipped over - when I’m thinking about things I need to say or ask, it’s sometimes happening in my head in Spanish first, or I am trying to figure out how I’d say a new thing in Spanish, even if I don’t need to. That was one of the exercise games we did, to describe a thing without naming it (like Pictionary but with words!) - an incredibly useful way to keep your brain and tongue moving creatively as you figure out the communication’s end game, instead of getting hung up on that specific thing you don’t know or can’t remember in the moment.
Another very powerful exercise was when she got us to explain differences in concepts to each other, using whatever language and examples we could find to draw upon - for example, the differences between the verbs ‘probar’, ‘tratar’ and ‘intentar’, which could all translate to the same thing in English but have quit distinct use cases in Spanish. You suddenly realise that explaining them in Spanish is in fact the only way it would make sense anyway, because they all mean ‘to try’ in English… which begins to feel lacking in depth by contrast.
So if you’re in Spain and feeling stuck at that intermediate plateau, or you want to level up your language while also experiencing a location through the eyes of enthusiastic local experts, I can’t recommend this kind of experience enough. Carolina’s next sessions are already booking up, and she is taking a group to Santiago de Compostela in the autumn. The groups are kept intentionally small, to ensure deep participation and engagement, so you need to get involved early.
Of course she also offers individual and group lessons, as well as a huge range of content to support language learners. Do check out her website, as well as her Youtube: