Here in Portugal, it's learned by everyone in school from the age of 6, and for at least 9 years, with most people having 11 years of lessons. However, due to the general population's poor level of English, learning goals are kept quite low in the official public-school curriculum. Nonetheless, since we get most entertainment media (movies, TV shows, video games, etc) subbed, as opposed to Spain, France and Italy, where most of it is dubbed, the younger generation has a pretty good level of proficiency in informal American English, and thus tourists find it mostly easy to communicate around here, despite typical grammatical errors and mispronounciations. As for myself, it doesn't sound weird to me at all because of the aforementioned reasons (maybe even mostly due to the fact that I was a Pokémaniac - games were in English, I repeat - from the age of 5) and the Advanced English program in my school, which meant that we graduated high school with a C2 level certificate in English (it's the maximum level, if you're not familiar with the grading system). For me, what's actually weird is the (understandable) fact that English-speaking people may very well go through life without having to learn a second language to any significant level unless they live abroad or their line of work requires it. Whereas people from European countries are usually fairly proficient in 3-5 languages, as long as they come from a fairly high, or at least educated social background.
