Catalunians and Basques ?

[LeftEyeNine]

Question is quite clear: Who are Catalunians and Basques ? Are they more of French or Spanish culture or a totally different one ? Any connection with the Aragonese (or any other local historical factions that I've not heard of) ?

Thanks in advance

[Taffy_is_a_Taff]

Basques are different in culture to mainstream French and Spanish society, and are very different in language (Basque language is not even Indo-European).

Catalans are more like the mainstream Spanish/French culture and have a language that is closely related to Castilian.

Edit: Catalonia and Aragon are a successor to Aragon (and Aragonese is still spoken in some areas and is very similar to Catalan and Castilian) whilst the Basques are descended from the kingdom of Navarre.

Edit: just in case you don't know, Castilian is what people generally call Spanish.

[LeftEyeNine]

Well there are a couple of villages in Turkey where there are only black people -that is a heritage from Ottoman times. Is the Basques' history something like that ? Sail there a long time ago from some other place somehow and settle there ? Maybe some different story -I just imagined ?

[Taffy_is_a_Taff]

The Basques were there before the Latins. The culture used to be spread over a larger area of North Eastern Iberia.

[LeftEyeNine]

Is their current population level normal or was lessened significantly by migrating tribes or Latin expansion ? I just thought that if they were there before anyone else they should have been greater in numbers.

[Taffy_is_a_Taff]

LEN, many populations undergo cultural change. I imagine that there are many people of Basque descent who are no longer culturally Basque.
The rest of Iberia was not entirely wiped out and replaced by Romans but they speak a Latin based language (Castilian, Catalan, Aragonese, Galician and Portugese) rather than a Celtic based language.

Edited because I wrote Castilian twice and Catalan not at all.
Edited again because I wrote Spain when I meant to write Iberia, I'd be expecting a slap from my Portugese friends if they ever found out.