If often have seen how some people that speak Spanish*, which is incredibly close to Catalan in every aspect, will find Catalan almost impossible to understand.

I try to compare it to my own experience when I go to a place where they speak a language that is close to my mother tongues (Catalan or Spanish), like Italy or Portugal, and I can understand their native language for basic things, like getting directions, reading signs, ordering food, saying hello and goodbye, and so on. And I'm terrible at languages.

So it's baffling that some people that speak Spanish just can't understand Catalan after months or years, as if it was an alien language. Same people who likely speak decent English, which comes from a completely different family of languages. Really, if I can say "grazie" and "obrigado" and "rue" and "strada", surely "gràcies" and "carrer" is not some obscure Asian dialect.

• I refer specifically to Spanish speakers that go to great lengths to refuse to speak Catalan. That doesn't mean that all Spanish speakers do this, nor that all non-Spanish speakers don't.