Using my GPS in Spain

Why not just download the whole european map set? The cost is probably real close to the same and you'll have everything you need for next time. There's absolutely no need to update maps once you have them - - the machine will die or become outdated before anything significant happens to the maps. I'm pretty sure all three major manufactures have U.S. sites - - in English. I did it once. No problem.

I have used mine in Great Britain and Wales and it worked great. And yes, you can have the directions in English. You can have them in many languages. You choose. When we were in England I chose my 'voice' to be a British girl complete with accent and she has been with me ever since. There were a few time it directed me a strange way, so do keep a map, but it mostly was perfect.

I thought the question was about downloading instructions being in English, not the words from the machine - - dumb me. The reason for the screw-up in the UK could stem from the fact that, while the Ordnance Survey is argueably the best mapping service in the world, the UK was originally mapped on more than one base line. The gps knows where you are on the face of the earth within a few feet, it may not know exactly where you are on the map. This is true all over the world. I once watched a gal ground her boat in the Caribbean by blindly following the gps despite the fact that the chart said she was going into shoaling water and the guy on the bow was yelling at her to turn. Big boat. Lots of money for a tow job. You might have a bit of trouble in southern Spain. There's gobs of highway construction that has been going on for years. The gps will try to send you on the non-existing old roads or the not-yet built new roads. Know the towns out if front of you and follow the signs if things start to look goofey.

In the context of your trip cost, $69 is peanuts. The GPS saves a lot of navigator stress. Our Garmin works very well in in Europe. It's worth it.

Download the whole western Europe set. The download instructions are in English. When you run the GPS, the instructions you are given are in whatever language you set it for, just like they are here. When my friend was visiting from Spain we changed the language on my TomTom to Spanish, and changed it back to English later. Mine happens to have the voice of John Cleese (an extra you can purchase from TomTom), which is English - and British. But my TomTom has a male and female Spanish voices you can choose from, too.