Is Spanish closer to French or Italian?

Italian and Spanish (along with Occitan, Catalan and Portuguese) are all Romance languages that share a common ancestor in Vulgar Latin, which was spoken in the Roman Empire by soldiers, colonists, and merchants. In terms of mutual intelligibility, Spanish and Italian are fairly close, with Italian being the 2nd most mutually intelligible language with Spanish.

French, on the other hand, while also a Romance language, diverged more significantly from Vulgar Latin than Spanish and Italian did. For example, French lost its case system and developed a distinct system of articles. Mutual intelligibility between Spanish and French is therefore lower: Spanish and French are not mutually intelligible.

In summary, Spanish is closer to Italian than to French.