In other words, “Español”could be thought of as a group of Spanish languages with “Castellano” being a distinct language within that group.
Are you sure?
> There are multiple dialects/languages (eg Gallego, Catalan) spoken in Spain that aren’t really common in the new world, the new world dialects are mostly based on the Castilian (castellano) dialect which was and is the prestige/official Spanish dialect promoted by the government and which settlers likely had in common.
Let’s see if e.g. Catalan is really relevant here.
It clearly is not. Why? The original commenter brought up the supposed differences between “castellano” and “español” in the context of Cuban Spanish. The minority languages of Spain are completely irrelvant here.
There are places in Latin America where they call their Spanish “castellano” (in Spanish). While other places call it “español”. And in that context they do just mean “Spanish”, since they have no reason to care about the minority languages of Spain.
So my shot in the dark guess was that the original commenter meant to refer to the difference between Spanish spoken in Spain and Spanish spoken in Latin America.
They all come from Vulgar Latin and depending on how you split it but Portuguese and Gallego come from a common ancestor and one has an easier time understanding Gallego if one speaks Portuguese than if one speaks only Spanish and Catalan would be a post until itself once we start discussing Occitan and Valencian, but it’s also not descended from Spanish (Gallo-Romance)
TLDR I really wish people would stop according Castellano as an official language and a bunch of languages that are as older or older than Castellano as some dialect descending from Castellano.
Castellano is the official language of the Spanish government from eg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Spanish_Academy and of course decades of repression of regional languages under eg the Franco regime. I don’t mean official as in “the true language” I mean official as in “the Spanish government/regime/royal dialect for centuries”. To the point many people as you mention equate Castellano with “Spanish” which is just not true - I agree with you
Maybe I am misunderstanding your comment but it's not me that is making Castillian "official" - I think it's bullshit that other Spanish languages aren't treated with more respect it's - the historical reality that it was accorded official status due to the political dominance of Castile and consequently the use of Castillian as a common tongue
I speak Spanish but I'm not Castilian and has no relationship with those two regions (Castile-Leon and Castile-La Mancha).