It's more closer to French than Spanish to be honest and from what I've seen (also the official language of Andorra that is squeezed between those countries) and yeah they have some cultural stuff as well...
I was just going to say this. Catalan is a Romance language like Spanish and French, but it's in the same group of Romance languages as French but not Spanish. I honestly think it makes more sense for them to be part of France than Spain (they have been before).
Theres other regions in Spain that want to become independent, I think they will become more serious about it now since Catalonia has declared independence, maybe in the future other regions will declare independence like Galicia and Basque. The Basque language is like the only native Iberian language left, so it doesn't make sense for them to be part of any other country. The Galician language is also closer to Portuguese than Spanish, in fact Galician and Portuguese were once the same language, so I think it also makes more sense for Galicia to be part of Portugal than Spain.
Something I found out yesterday was that Portugal once considered Spain uncivilized and since it was the only country that bordered them (if you didn't count their colonies, and Spain is still the only country that borders Portugal), Portugal said that Spain isolated it from the rest of civilized Europe.
Catalonia has actually banned bull fighting, which makes it obvious it's not like Spain. Spain is technically just Castille and Castillians controlling other people groups like the Galicians, Catalans, Leonese, Basque, Asturians, and probably some other ones. The name Spain comes from the word Hispania which Romans and people who spoke Latin used to say the Iberian Peninsula. So obviously the name comes from them wanting to control the entire Iberian Peninsula (which includes Portugal). I think Portugal was once called Galicia (which I think is Galiza in Portuguese).
