Team building in English: a corporate activity where the facilitation, rules, written materials and questions are delivered in English, so that non-Spanish speakers take part on equal terms.
Bilingual team building: the same activity designed for a team that mixes English and Spanish speakers, with instructions in both languages and teams built so nobody is left out.
In Madrid both are perfectly possible. The difference between a good and a bad experience is rarely the activity itself: it is whether the provider has adapted the content to English or just translated the rules on the day.
Madrid has become home to the Spanish and southern European offices of a lot of international companies. That means more and more of the briefs we receive start with the same line: “part of the team doesn’t speak Spanish”. Sometimes it is a handful of people in a team of forty. Sometimes it is a whole regional team flying in for a kick-off, with the Madrid office as host.
We have produced more than 500 events for over 400 companies, and a good share of them have been run in English or in a mix of English and Spanish. What follows is what we have learned about getting the language part right, which turns out to matter more than almost any other decision.
Why language decides whether it works
Team building is supposed to bring people together. When the language setup is wrong, it does the opposite: the people who already feel like outsiders at the office end up as spectators at the one event designed to include them.
It usually goes wrong in one of three ways:
- The host speaks Spanish and “someone will translate”. In practice, a colleague whispers a summary, the jokes get lost, and by the second round the non-Spanish speakers have stopped trying.
- The rules are in English, the content is not. The clues of an escape room, the questions of a game show or the script of a murder mystery stay in Spanish, because adapting them takes time the provider did not budget for.
- The teams split by language. If you let people group themselves, Spanish speakers end up with Spanish speakers. The activity then reinforces exactly the divide it was meant to bridge.
None of these are problems with the activity. They are design problems, and they are solved before the day, not during it.
The three language setups
Before choosing an activity, decide which of these three setups fits your team. It changes the format, the materials and how the teams are built.
A practical rule: if you hesitate between two setups, pick the one that includes more people. A Spanish speaker in an English-language activity in Madrid rarely feels excluded; an English speaker in a Spanish-only one almost always does.
Planning an event for an international team?
Tell us the group size and the languages in the room, and we will suggest the setup and formats that fit.
Request a proposal →Which activities work for mixed teams
Every activity can be run in English. What changes is how much of the experience depends on language, and therefore how much adaptation it needs. We think about it as “language load”.
Low language load: the easiest choice for mixed groups
These formats are about doing things with your hands, so people collaborate even when their shared vocabulary is limited.
- Cooking team building (Master Cooking), Master Sushi and Master Cocktail: a short explanation, then teams compete MasterChef-style and a jury judges the result.
- Architects for a Day: teams build a bridge with limited materials. Planning, negotiation and a lot of pointing.
- Corporate Canvas: a creative gymkhana that ends in a collective mural the company takes back to the office. Very visual, very inclusive.
- Bikes with a Future: teams assemble bikes that are then donated. The purpose speaks every language.
Medium language load: physical games with clear rules
Rules need to be explained well, but once they are understood the game carries itself.
- Squid Game team building: a series of short challenges inspired by the series.
- Pirate Boarding and Crazy Cars: gymkhana-style competitions with tests and races.
High language load: great in English, but only if they are adapted
These are the formats where the words are the game. They work very well with international teams, as long as the content has been prepared in English from the start.
- Megaconcurso (corporate game show): the questions are the activity. They need to be written for the audience, not translated from a Spanish quiz full of local references nobody else will get.
- Portable escape room and Mystery in the City: clues, documents and riddles must work in English, including wordplay.
- Actors for a Day and Karaoke: scripts and song choices shape how comfortable people feel performing.
For a bilingual group, a good combination is to open with a low-load activity that breaks the ice across languages and close with a higher-load one, once people have already mixed.
What to ask a provider before booking
Many providers say they “do activities in English”. These questions tell you whether that means a real English-language event or a Spanish one with a translated rule sheet.
How we run events in English
Running activities in English is a regular part of our work, not an exception we improvise. A few things we do on every international event:
We adapt the content, not just the rules
I studied Translation and Interpreting in English, and I adapt the scripts, questions and materials for international teams myself. The goal is that an English speaker gets the same jokes, the same twists and the same “aha” moments as a Spanish speaker would.
We decide the language setup on the briefing call
Fully English, bilingual or Spanish with support: we ask how many nationalities are in the room and how comfortable people are in each language, and design the teams and materials around that.
We come to you
Activities take place at your office or at the venue you choose, anywhere in Madrid. If you need a venue or catering, we help you find and coordinate them, so you have one point of contact. We also run events in Barcelona, Valencia, Seville and the rest of Spain.
Formats sized to your agenda
Our activities start from 10 people and usually last between 1.5 and 2 hours, which makes them easy to fit after a meeting or at the end of an offsite day. For larger programmes, we combine several activities with catering into a half day or a full day, or build them into a wider corporate event.
Teams from companies such as Amazon, Google, CaixaBank and Iberdrola have worked with us, and we have more than 500 Google reviews with an average of 5.0. If you want to see the full catalogue, the team building activities in Madrid page has all of them.
Budget
As a reference, team building in Madrid starts from around €40 per person (excluding VAT) for an activity at your own space, and is around €120 per person for a full day with venue and catering. The final figure depends on group size, duration, format and add-on services, which is why every event gets a tailored quote.
If you want to understand how a quote is built and how to compare proposals, we explain it in detail in our guide to how much team building in Madrid costs.