How easy is it to pick up Spanish if I want to study abroad in Spain?

Well, the Foreign Service Institute has made a comprehensive list of languages which reckons that Spanish is one of the very easiest for English-speakers to learn, possible to obtain in 23-24 weeks (or 575 to 600 hours). While this is clearly imperfect, and although all people will learn at different speeds, this is an interesting conjecture by experts and you should take heart in the fact that you should be able to pick it up okay. Just don't get discouraged if it's tough - if you keep it up and talk to as many native Spanish speakers as you can, the language will come.

http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty