The basics words of Catalan language are more similar to French than to Spanish (example, «cheese» in French «frommage», Catalan «formatge», Spanish «queso») (example «to speak», in French «parler», in Catalan «parlar», in Spanish «hablar»). But more sophisticated words are more similar to Spanish (example, «advisor» in French «conseiller», in Catalan «assesor», in Spanish «asesor»). This reflects the history of Catalonia, which started its history being part of the Frankish kingdom and ended up becoming part of Spain.
The Catalan pronunciation is much more similar to Spanish, due to the fact that the French pronunciation has gone very far away from its Latin roots (because of Germanic and Celtic influence). So Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian have share a similar pronunciation while French is very different with respect to all the rest of Romance languages. But Catalan is more similar to French when it comes to drop the final letters of the Latin words. «Green», French «vert», Catalan «verd», Spanish «verde»).
The Catalan grammar is much more similar to Spanish than to French, due to centuries of influence. Medieval Catalan grammar was more similar to French and Occitan, but this was many centuries ago. In all the grammar elements described by Paul in the video, Catalan behaves like Spanish. The only exception is that Catalan has a concordance with the object in composed verbs, like French. («He has seen them» (where «them» is «a bunch of girls»), Spanish: «Las ha visto», French: «Il les a vues», Catalan «Les ha vistes», where «visto» is masculine singular and «vues» and «vistes» are feminine plural).