LBS or IESE

Sorry I got pulled away yesterday.

I think there are a few things about London vs. IESE for your perspective at least.

First of all, depending on where you are coming from and if London or Barcelona will be a cultural experience for you. If you are not from Europe then both will be and both in a similar way.

At IESE, you may learn Spanish. You need to learn Spanish one way or another to make your way through the daily life while you can get away straining your ears in London, esp east London. Ha!
Knowing business school students and LBS, there is always a trip to fly somewhere. Easy Jet, Ryanair, and BA - there is someone always heading to Italy, Croatia, or Spain. Lots of similarly-minded folks will be in the same boat, looking for options and opportunities to spice things up on the weekend and head somewhere. If you stay in Barcelona, you are likely to also want to travel - you can take only so much Gaudi. Heck you can always fly to BCN from London on the weekends. There are so many flights by BA and Iberia, let alone budget carriers.

Don't underestimate culture shock at both locations. Lots of Americans especially find UK to be much tougher to adopt to than they expected, in part because they have such low expectations for the effort but that's a whole different country, culture, traditions, etc. I would probably consider other elements into your decision besides location because location can easily be changed as mentioned above. What you can't change as easily is classmates, class size, schedules, requirements, etc.

At the end of the day both programs and locations are enviable and hard to make a mistake. Even if you think you do, both are just 3 hrs apart.

-BB