Madrid or Barcelona ?? Please Help

Hello to all,

i am hoping you may be able to help me out a little. I have been planning to relocate to Europe for a while now and I am now committed to making this move at the end of 2012.

My dilemma is whether to go to Madrid or Barcelona and I am hoping that people who are living in these place would be able to give me their best advice.

From a professional side of things I work in the finance industry as a wealth manager and will be working for a consultancy that has offices in both locations. My role is primarily dealing with expats normally between the ages of 25 to 55 with a small part of my business model aimed at retirees. Therefore it is important that the location I choose has a healthy amount of expats with new people arriving on an ongoing basis.

I am aware that both Madrid and Barcelona are major cities with expats living there, but which one would provide the best opportunity ?

From a family point of view, I will be relocating with my wife and two young children, so if you have any ideas where would be better for a family it would be appreciated.

We are looking more at Barcelona from a family perspective but mainly because of the climate (we currently live in Asia and are used to higher temperatures and the sun shining a lot !)as we know that Madrid has the colder winters but if Madrid would be the better place from a business perspective then that would outweigh the warmer climate.

If anybody out there could help out it would be really appreciated, we are heading to Spain in June this year to look at both Madrid and Barcelona but if we could be armed with information in advance it would be great.

If anybody feels strongly about one particular place and could even recommend areas where we should look at living in (within 45 minutes of the city preferably) then that would be very useful information as well.

Looking forward to getting your thoughts and advice

Apologies for waffling on a bit.................