Catalan shares many traits with the other neighboring Romance languages (Italian, Sardinian, <answer>Occitan</answer>, and Spanish). However, despite being mostly situated in the Iberian Peninsula, Catalan has marked differences with the Ibero-Romance group (Spanish and Portuguese) in terms of pronunciation, grammar, and especially vocabulary; showing instead its closest affinity with <answer>Occitan</answer> and to a lesser extent Gallo-Romance (French, Franco-Provençal, Gallo-Italian).
To what group is Catalan most closely related?
Occitan