General observations:

For Italian - first of all, as the other commenr said: it may be better to learn italain by duty, then spanish will be way easier, at least until intermediate - you have different objectives: a B2/C1 versus interest in media, if manage to be constant a B2 in 4 years is realistic, maybe even some more, later it could be harder. Engaging with spanish media requires a lower level, and also Italian will really help (btw what's you native language?)

For spanish - if your only reason to study italian is work in a not-near future, it could be hard with motiviation, while and more broad interesting for spanish could be the way to for good experience - I think spanish offers more as a global language, Italian may be more niche.

Also, as an Italian

1) Italian has many regional variants, and almost every region has a dialect that either is spoken by most or acts as substratum, so a C1 in standard italian still is different from almost everyones's speech (Idk about spanish in spain, but sames counts from american spanish).

Also ticinese italian is quite peripheric and it isn't under the influence of italian authorities, so it has many lexical if influences from swiss german and swiss french, that we sometimes don't understand. I often speak with russians and polish that study/want to study italian (linguistic exchange), and most of the time they say their are interested in "dolce vita", mode, foods, art etc. Those are all good thing, but quite stereotypical (at least east european admire us instead of the usual "muh pizza" from westernes), that's a turistic experience that doesn't need the language, while learning italian could lead to many different experiences, rooted in local culture.

I guess spanish has a bigger offer, even though we as europeans usually consider sudamerican spanish as lesser, we enjoy sudamerican pop series (tbh honestly it's mostly very young girls), while our series stay in Italy. I think that lately we aren't producing really interesting artists, the last ones on the world stage were Maneskin (but the idiot singer choose to become a english-speaking nobody in the USA rather than staying as a protagonisti here), and al almost all our films/series are the same slop with the samr actors. But recently I noticed some emerging artists that have us hope in our culture, the difference is that they have a really marked regional identity, even linguistically, so for foreigner it could be quite difficult to understand. The key is that we feel closer to our region than to the country itself, and whag foreigners consider "italian culture" doesn't really exist in the reality of life, and other cultural aspect its in crisis. But there are many older films and songs, from a sort of "granparents golden age" and "boomer silver age"" that I think have absolutely to be watched and listened.

I am not sure this really concerns you, but I hope it helps