Why only European and Latin American dubs?
 

Why are Spanish dubs of English movies and TV always only in "Latin American" and "European" versions? It strikes me as odd that it's only Spain that has their own dubs. I mean, it's not like Latin America has only one accent/dialect. Argentinian Spanish is about as different from so-called "generic" Spanish as Spain Spanish is, and Argentina has about as many people as Spain does; why don't they have their own dubs too? Or any other Latin American country or region?

Neutral Spanish versus Spain's Spanish. In the beginning films were subtitled and there was an effort to develop one sole Neutral Spanish vocabulary and accent for TV in the Spanish speaking world. Series like Bonanza -first seasons- and I Love Lucy are made that way. But Franquism took action against what they thought harmed their language and put a quota on foreign productions in Spanish -Argentine film industry suffered a lot for that- and force all productions in foreign languages to be dubbed into "correct" Spanish -that is, Castilian- to force that as a standard. Hence, since the early 60s Neutral Spanish is used just in América, and Spain has her own style of Castilian with a selection of vocabulary and good, soft pronunciation that keep their film and TV productions still marketable in the rest of the world.

Thank you aleC, it is a very interesting question...

I don't know myself all the ins and outs... but I know for sure that CENSORSHIP during Franco's times was the main cause... i.e., the dialogue could be easily ALTEREED to serve a political cause... less than "pure"... I forgot specific examples, but there is one in Casablanca (H. Bogart), where a reference to the Spanish troops, got completely changed... without no Spaniard even noticing or being aware of it...

These things made the "dubbing" industry one of the most "professionals" in Spain... As a I said, this is just an example, there may be a lot more of factors...

Hmm, I never thought about Franco's influence causing it before; that makes sense. In any case, I think it's interesting to have two different dubs of the same thing.

Exactly what accent are Latin American dubs in, though? I know it's supposedly "generic/standard" Spanish, but that doesn't usually mean anything. Like, when people think of "generic" English, they usually think of a midwestern accent, which isn't truly a generic accent: it's identifiably midwestern.

For example, if you were to watch this, what region/country would you associate it with?

I used to be better at this, but this sounds like standard Spanish sung by
someone from Spain.

Well, I think it's modern Mexican -as opposed as classic Mexican, when Mexico was the almost exclusive dubbing centre this side of the pond because of their extraordinary quality-. What may give it away is the voice of the funny characters about 1:20. But it also could perfectly be Venezuelan, from Etcétera Group who have also premises in Miami and hire also dubbing actors and singers from other centres too.

Neutral Spanish is supposed to be neutral, so, if you guess their origin quickly without racking your brains a bit, they'd quite failed.

Really? I would've thought the lack of ceceo sounds would've given it away. I know that not everyone in Spain talks like that, but all the Spain dubs I've looked at have it in full force.

If anyone's really curious, here's the same song in European Spanish and original English:

Spain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhHnCSjtY6g
English: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSS5dEeMX64

In Spanish [Mulán, dubbed by Grabaciones y Doblajes S.A. (México)]

Mulán dubbed for Spain. (very neutral Spanish friendly, I must admit)

I didn't know anything about the francoist regime's influence in the Spain's Spanish dubbing! Nevertheless it seems plausible. Anyway the fact is that nowadays almost 40 years after the dictator's death, every attempt of promoting films in original version in Spain, has been a commercial fiasco. So the cinema producers and distributors keep the dubbing industry alive just because it is profitable.
On the other hand, it is not the first time that I write here that dubbing actors in Spain have a much better pronunciation than the "common" ones ( It is just my opinion but I think that they are generally selected because of their physical attractiveness rather than because of their interpretative skills). This year Juan Luis Galiardo, Pepe Sancho and Constantino Romero, three of the very best dubbing actors in my country have passed away. All three of them, but specially the two first ones were also excellent cinema and theatre professionals. Their talent as dubbing actors, as well as that of many other less known professionals, has made some very bad films become into a reasonably passable ones once dubbed.
Finally, we must admit that a very large number of American Spanish speakers dislike the sound of the European Spanish (just see the comments to the movie trailers in Castilian Spanish at Yutube). This fact has also replication about the sound of the American Spanish among a good number of Spain's Spanish speakers.
In spite of the existence of at least five main Spanish dialects in America, the so called "Neutral Spanish" seems to be well accepted by the most part of the American Spanish speakers, while the differences in phonetics, intonation, grammatical structure (the reproduction of English American grammatical structures are much more frequent at the American Spanish than in the European one), and even in meaning, prevent us to share the same dubbing at both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Quisiera saber si existe un doblaje argentino porque a mí el español argentino suena suficientamente distinto al "español neutral" que se oye en las notícias CÑN y las películas que conozco yo dobladas en español .