We haven’t watched the TVs in the rooms but every room has one. The ratio of TV size to remote size was the smallest I have seen.
Spanish bars always have TVs and they are always on. It’s the only thing we don’t like about Spanish bars. We try to sit as far away from the TV as we can.
In the bars, the TVs are either tuned to sports (fútbol!) or news. In our hotel rooms, we could watch a lot of American or British TV shows. However, all TV shows here, as far as we can tell, are dubbed into Spanish. So strange to watch American characters that we know and love speaking Spanish.
When we were in Portugal a few years ago, we found that all the American or British shows were in English with Portuguese subtitles. Someone there told us that this is why most of the Portuguese speak pretty good English. As opposed to most of the Spanish who pretty much don’t speak English.
Bars everywhere now have TVs, usually, if not universally, tuned to sports. And in America, even elegant restaurants (think Artichoke Café here in Albuquerque) have piped in music. That’s one thing we like about restaurants at our music festival in Austria, some quite fancy, others simple: no background music.
Back when I was going the the gym I argued with the gym people that they should not have any music playing because anyone who wanted music has their own and why force it on the prop who don’t want it. My arguments were, of course, ignored. It is especially hard for me because I listen to podcasts through my hearing aids, which are not, of course, noice canceling and so the music interfered with my listening. Thinking about it I realized that hearing aids are noise enhancing earphones.