Well that's what the Catalans (people from the Spanish region of Catalonia, et al) would have us believe.http://www.stand-up-surf.com/2011/04/el-origen-del-sup-barcelona-1920/
"The origin of sup Barcelona 1920"
It's in Spanish, but you can get the gist. I'll translate it if anyone really wants me to (not being a smart-arse, lived in South America in the 80's for a year or so)......
The most fascinating explanation I heard for the Spanish lisp was that there was a king of spain some hundreds of years ago. He had a very bad lisp and to ingratiate themselves his subjects all took on his manner of speaking, and somehow it has stuck!
But yes I spent some time learning Spanish before a trip to Spain some years ago and found it quite useless as I spent most of my time in catalunya and the basque country where people were almost as likely to speak English as castellano!
I agree they are catalans and speak the lingo but administratively they're not part of it... It is very often the case with many region in europe like the basque country or arpitania for exemple where country borders do actually splits communities.