British Council scheme in Spain?

Hey, I was wondering if anybody has taught English as a British Council language assistant in Spain? I have a compulsory year abroad next year and am really struggling to decide whether to work, study or teach with the British Council.
Everything about the language assistant scheme sounds good to me, other than the fact that it is very competitive and that you can't pick an exact location to teach. I would like to live in a larger city (ideally Madrid) but am scared that I would be given a remote town if I applied.
Does anyone have any experience with this or is in the same position?!

On the application form for assistantships there is a section which covers your preferences. You will be able to choose three regional areas and list them in order of preference, your preferred age group and your preferred environment out of city, town or village/rural. You will then be able to put these preferences in order of importance to you.

Bear in mind that the regional choice covers the entire region, not just the city it may be named after, so if you put "Madrid" as your first and most important preference you could find yourself in a rural part of the Madrid region. This is why you would probably be best to have city as your top choice, although that obviously means you could be allocated some other city than Madrid. So in the attached example (from my daughter's application two years ago) you would put 1st choice against environment, 2nd choice against region and 3rd choice against age group.

Obviously, they want their assistants to be happy so they try to accommodate preferences wherever possible, although nothing can be guaranteed, especially because the actual allocation to schools is done by the Spanish education system and not the British Council itself.

At my daughter's university, they obliged every student applying for an assistantship to also apply for a place to study for their year abroad as a plan B in case their application for the assistantship was unsuccessful or, crucially, in case it was successful but the student was allocated to somewhere that they really didn't want to go to (you are not obliged to accept your offer; you can turn it down if you feel it is unsuitable). It would be worth your while asking at your Year Abroad Office if this is the procedure at your university too.

Hope this helps.
Good luck in your decision.

Hi!

I'm currently on my year abroad in Barcelona doing an internship. There are lots of pros and cons to all the options so it's best to go with what you think is a good fit for you.

As I study two languages, I'm splitting my year between internship and studying. I'm really enjoying the internship and I feel like it's teaching me some really valuable skills that I will be able to put on my CV when I graduate. It's also been great for giving me a better idea of what I might enjoy doing after university. However, I don't think it's necessarily as social as studying might be, and it really depends on the company.

Let me know if you have any other questions!
Katie, 3rd year Modern Languages student