I am Portuguese and I lived and worked in Spain for more than 3 years and to lump together Portuguese and Castellian as one language is very weird to me. I had

I am Portuguese and I lived and worked in Spain for more than 3 years and to lump together Portuguese and Castellian as one language is very weird to me. I had to learn Castellian to be able to be understood in everyday situations, to attend classes and to be able work in an office with natives. Some words are spelled the same but the phonetics are completely different ( unless you speak Brazilian Portuguese which could be argued to be closer to Gallician-Portuguese ), and although Portuguese natives can understand a bit of Castillian ( not to the level of being able to read a newspaper though ), try to get two youths from the streets of Lisbon and Madrid to talk to each other and most likely they will sadly resort to speaking in broken English.