hi lucia, thanks for added me and welcome to italki.... and answer your question... Spanish and Portuguese are both Latin as English as well but Spanish and Portuguese are such different each other. At all, isn't hard a spanish person understands someone who speaks portuguese. Grammatically, I think portuguese is a little bit harder than spanish but For someone who speaks spanish learn how to speak is easier at all. Other thing is the false friends, word with the same writing but with different meaning, but i don't think it's a problem.... i hope I help.... see ya! if u'd like to pratice i got skype and msn...

Hi Lucia. I'm native in portuguese. Its a little similar, but not too much. Sometimes I think that english is more similar with portuguese tham the spanish.

Hi. Well, I speak Portuguese and I think Spanish is very easy to read, but hard to understand when it is spoken because they speak very fast! Although both languages are very similar, and maybe Portuguese is a little harder because we have more types of sounds, like the \z\ sound or the famous \ão\. Sometimes these languages are so alike each other that you can get confused with some similar words, so I think that you should learn just one of them first. I hope it helps you, bye!