Valencian vs Catalan to my uneducated ear

We recently took a trip down south to visit some relatives. Now that I know a bit more Catalan (all those hours listening to CatMusica while driving the kids this way and that), it was interesting to hear on the radio what Valencians made of their special language.

Basically it sounded exactly like a Spanish person reading Catalan phonetically, with a lot more Spanish words added. None of those super-closed vowels, U/O interchange etc. The weird thing is that closing the vowels sometimes makes Catalan actually sound closer to Spanish.

For example, In Catalan, “Les Planes” sounds a lot like “Las Planas”, which would be how you would write it in Spanish (unrelated footnote: if you look *way* up on the building at the FGC Les Planes stop you can still see an old “Las Planas” sign dating from Franco), whereas in Valencian you would just pronounce it “Les Planes” with the E’s sounding like regular Spanish E’s.