Not a dialect of anything
A full Romance language closer to Occitan than to Spanish, spoken by ten million people and banned within living memory.
Ten million speakers, a full literary tradition since the Middle Ages, and a bridge tongue: from Catalan, Spanish, French and Italian all lean closer. Barcelona treats Catalan speakers differently, and it is the difference between visiting the city and being let into it.
SEN-y
Level-headed good sense, held up as the highest civic virtue
Catalans describe themselves with two words that only work as a pair.
Seny is the steady one: measure, restraint, knowing what a thing will cost before starting it.
On its own it would be nothing but caution. Its opposite is on this page too.
ROW-sha
The sudden outburst that breaks the good sense, and is just as necessary
The other half of seny, and the reason the pair gets quoted so often.
A people with nothing but measure would build nothing. Rauxa is the lurch that starts things: the leap, the revolt, the cathedral nobody could afford.
Catalans will tell you a life needs both, in that order.
Where Catalan parts company with the languages closest to it, and what each one would cost you from here.
Catalan vs Spanish → Catalan vs French → Catalan vs Portuguese →
Reading about a language is not speaking it. These are the places I would go to find someone to speak Catalan with.
The Catalan Passepartout is not out yet
Five printed pages that carry you through the arrival. Leave your address and you hear about it first, and nothing else.
Leaving takes one click.
Short stories written inside a measured vocabulary, with the word lists and nothing invented for a textbook.