Catalan Company

[The Wizard]

I think it unlikely because of the large natural barrier between Spain and France the Pyrrenees.

Provençal is the closest relative linguistically -- and it can be found in Southern France, yes.

EDIT: On the American aboriginals vs. the Spaniards debate: there was also a huge gap between the Aztec concept of war and that of the Europeans -- in this case the Spaniards.

In Europe, the objective was to kill. The period when knights had fought each other merely for loot from ransoming POWs of the nobility had long since passed by the time Cortez butted into Central America, and European powers fought in the gritty style of the lower caste soldier: kill or be killed.

Meanwhile, for the Aztecs, war was a ritual, a way through which to please the gods and procure sacrificial victims for their religious rites (lovely). Combat wasn't deadly, even when one realizes they were basically at war with Stone Age tools. Meeting a foe that, besides being decked in steel and armed with stuff that pricks a lot harder than what you're carrying around, also is out to kill you outright and doesn't respect, in any way, the standards of war you're used to must have been a bewildering, if not shocking experience for Native Americans.

And, yes, it took the Spaniards the greater part of two centuries (correct me if I'm wrong on this) to subdue that damned Yucatán peninsula. And, lo and behold -- it's still as unruly as Hell, even to Mexico.