You're welcome.
I saw your message and welcomed you there. You'll see I am not exactly a fan of LA/NY salsa, hehe. It was pretty clear your "so/so spanish".
Besides asking in the message board, there is a page that's often referred to when somebody is asking for places to dance out of town:
Todosalsa I hope it's updated recently, for some of these pages, like salsapower.com are still nowadays referring to clubs long time dissapeared.
BTW, browsing the site, I saw several names of clubs in Barcelona, and I couldn't tell you which I was to, but I remember going to the ones in Maremagnum (outside the "Forum de las Culturas" that's being held these days), and they had a reasonable level of dancing (BArcelona level is generally lower than Madrid, don't know why) but it's also pretty risky, although it doesn't seem to be. Years ago a person was killed by the doormen and these days another death is related to these guards.
Whereas the first one could be an excess of the doormen with a very drunk and probably very agressive client that they wouldn't let in, this latter one seems to have happened to a drug dealer who died of heart attack after supposedly having had a quarrel (with the guards) inside the fun area.
However, it's dangerous. I was several days, but only entered one, and that one I saw a fast (so that guards couldn't act) but cruel and brutal fight, between "clients" when somebody suddenly hit a guy with extreme violence in his neck and back and there was a riot. Beware! It was a haven of peace and suddenly a storm of fists and runs to escape of the guards. Those guards have a really difficult task with all that drunk and drugged people looking for problems and a good fight and the drug dealers, and sometimes (in other cities) have been shot or stabbed.
When I was there, several people recommended "Salsa Buenavista" as the best in Barcelona (a.k.a. Barna). I believe the other one I was to was "Antilla" , and if this is the one I mean, it was good.
As for the classes, I had mine with Andrés, a Cuban teacher which is considered by most as the best salsa teacher in Madrid, but everyone have their own favourites. Some speak of a coupe of cubans (xxxx and Elizabeth) that teach at studio47 (I think that's the name) academy. I had classes of "despelote y gozadera" ( african movements applied to salsa) with them, and they were pretty goos in knowledge and knew well how to explain, but I couldn't really judge because it was an intensive course and it was too compressed to fix the knowledge. For me it was a bit too fast (and I am good at learning moves) but that could be because of so much info in such few time.
In MAdrid there are two ways to learn: Academies and teachers at discos or smaller clubs. None should give you a better teaching than the other. However, there are strong differeneces between academies and between discos. I would advise you, as a first precaution, NOT to have classes that are free( there are at some clubs), for, because of this they are massified and teachers are many times unexperienced (maybe they dance well but they can't teach).
The problem will be to fit you inside the classes because you could get into an intermediate or advanced group, but you probably cannot do some very used steps of Cuban salsa, like the steps for "aspirina", "dile que no", and others, which are very basic when learning salsa here. Putting out with the general level shouldn't be a problem for a salsa dancer, but it would require more than a couple of classes and I doubt the teacher would include you for a couple of days if he believes you could be kind of a handicap for the class. He would if it were for a long course.
Besides, Andrés, for example, carefully balances boys and girls for his classes, so the most probable is that there is no place avaliable. Of course, in other club classes (like Empire), there is not such balance and you'll be welcomed always, ..., but the guy can't really teach, sorry!
The usual frequence of club classes is once a week, whereas in academies there are like 3 hours a week or intensives of a dayly hour.
As for the rest, the guys will probably tell you their favourites, although there is only a bunch of the members, cause most are on holidays at the coasts.
In August there is always a lower number of dancers, since almost 2/3 of the people take holidays these days and use to leave the town. This has more incidence in smaller discos and in the weekdays sessions. For me, it's a bless, since the discos use to get overcrowded, and these days you can dance. Yesterday night I was to Tropical House (after a super-siesta, and now I almost dead
) and there was enough people without the excesses of other days. And it was Wednesday.
Anyway, in September almost all will be back (I won't, since I leave for República Dominicana on Sept 3rd, and Chekia and Poland on 13th), and in late august many of those who left massively the city will be pouring back also.
Whoops! Fortunately there is not much work today either, because I almost wrote another book, ...