Have you ever visited Barcelona or Ibiza and been expecting to see Spanish everywhere, but instead saw another language (that looks very similar)? That would be Catalan!
Catalan has over 8 million speakers worldwide. It is one of the four official languages of Spain, together with Spanish, Basque and Galician, and is spoken predominantly in the northern region of Spain called Catalonia. The country of Andorra is the only country in the world where Catalan is its one and only official language. It is also spoken in the Balearic Islands and a small part of Italy.
It is a huge misconception that Catalan is just a dialect of Spanish. In fact, linguistically speaking, Catalan is more similar to French than Spanish. This is because, although they are all Western Romance Languages, Catalan is on the Gallo-Romance branch with French, while Spanish and Portuguese lie on the Ibero-Romance branch. Historically, until the 19th century, Catalan was considered a dialect of Occitan, which was the language spoken in the most southern part of France (L’Occitanie) in cities such as Marseille, Perpignan and Nice, before French (as we know it today) took over. Occitan is still spoken in some rural areas, however it is far less common, particularly among the younger generations.
Here is a fun video that explains the differences between Catalan and Spanish: