Linguistic pluralism and dubbing in Spain

Abstract

In 2011, Agustí Villaronga’s Pa Negre won nine Goya Awards and was selected as Spain’s entry at the Oscars. However, the original language of the film (Catalan) ruffled some conservative feathers. As a consequence, the Spanish right-wing media repeatedly questioned Pa Negre’s artistic merit and Spanishness. Taking that smear campaign as starting point, the paper explores the complex, and often controversial, linguistic dynamics of television broadcasting and theatrical film exhibition and distribution in Spain, especially where a regional language is co-official with Spanish.More specifically, the paper first provides a historical overview of dubbing in Spain. Next, it assesses the political recognition of regional languages in Spain and the role that regional pubcasters have played in their normalization. The paper concludes by addressing the continuing dominance of Castilian Spanish-dubbed US films at Spanish theaters, despite costly efforts on the part of regional governments to increase the number of releases in Galician, Basque and Catalan.

Keywords

• film industry
• audiences
• Basque
• Castilian Spanish
• Catalan
• Catalonia Film Law