Hello, well talking about the latin america's version of both languages... There's a lot of similarities.. (I do speak spanish, we can talk with somebody from brazil, if we speak slowly, we can understand most of the things, without a previous knowledge of portugues nor spanish). The major part of the words are similar, in written they have some variations, but we can understand a lot when we read it, pronounciation of both languages is different. I think that portuguese is more difficult than spanish.. pronounciation is more complicated, some letters change their pronounciation like happens in english. the grammar is probably a 95% the same than spanish. there are just some exceptions about things that are used actually in portuguese and we're used in the ancient spanish, but doesn't exist nowadays. One more thing... latin accents are easier and clereast than europeans. but if you learn one of those, then you can move to the other easily... In my country. as we know spanish.. portuguese courses do not late more than 8 months (since beginner to advance) Hope it was helpful

Spanish and Portuguese are very similar, almost identical, but mainly in the written structure. The spoken language gets a little complicated because Portuguese phonology is very different than Spanish. It's usually easier for a Portuguese speaker to understand Spanish than vice versa. That being said, having a good grounding in either language will help you learn the other quite easily.

Are you talking about european or latin spanish? And european portugues or brazilian? There are some similarities and differences also between the two varieties of spanish and portugues. Please specify what you are talking about and I can help you in your question.