FROM THE BOCAZAS OF GOONIES

It's one of the films of the Eighties. In both the Anglosphere and Spain.
That rag-tag band of outcast children searching for pirate treasure on the outskirts of their hometown (Astoria, Oregon), following a map discovered while spring cleaning in the attic (and while being chased by persistent mobsters).
GOONIES!
Brand (Bran) was the leader, a brave teenager. Mikey (Mickey), Brand's little brother, had asthma. Data was the token Asian, the brains and the Q of the band. Steph was the girly girl. Andy was the nerdy tomboy. Chunk (Gordy) was overweight, and he could do the Truffle Shuffle (El Supermeneo). And Mouth (Bocazas)... It's not hard to find out how he got his nickname.

Clark Devereux, AKA "Mouth" ("Bocazas").

The treasure was hidden by Captain "One-Eyed" Willy (Willy el Tuerto) in the seventeenth century, when the region was a colonial battleground between the interests of the Habsburgs and the Stuarts. Thus, he wrote the treasure map in Spanish (which became Italian in the Spanish/Castilian dub).

In fact, Clark Devereux's fluency in Spanish (Italian) is an important plot point, not only because he can translate the treasure map, but also to trick cleaning lady Rosalita (Mexican in the original, and obviously Italian, renamed Rosanna, in the dub), who can't speak the language of her employers.

Rosalita (Rosanna)

 Mouth/Bocazas acts as an interpreter between Rosalita/Rosanna and the Perkinses, but as a rather unreliable interpreter, mistranslating what the cleaning lady says to trick both her and her employers!!

Long story short, the dub of The Goonies translates English into Castilian and Spanish into Italian, a trend followed when there is a language barrier to be overcome in the film (compare Sebastian or Tito in classical Disney films, Buzz Lightyear's Spanish Mode/Modo Romántico, the "Franish" Dignitary in Frozen...).

DISNEY DUBS' CASTILIAN CHANGES

When I saw the Castilian dub of Frozen for Christmas, I drank the whole film like a warming draught of Napoleon Cognac. The trolls, the royals, the loyal and stalwart yet insecure Kristoff... even the foreign dignitaries that show up at court. Including that dark diplomat (clearly established as a foreigner in Scandinavia) who spoke French and Castilian with a French accent.

Faux français

In the original (as listed in the end credits), he was the Spanish Dignitary! the Spanish Dignitary, Disney's first European Spanish character, who became French in the Castilian dub... Zut alors (or, as the French would rather say, Oh la vache! [c'est à dire, "Holy cow!"])!

This being the very first Castilian (European Spanish) character in a Disney film. The supporting cast of the previous films had hitherto only contained Latino characters, whose background was given in the dub through the Castilian/Latino dialects dichotomy (shibboleths such as lisping or lengthening vowels mark the diatopic variations).

A Mariachi mutt...

...or a Cuban crab, for instance.

Castilian characters in the European Spanish dubs of Anglophone media tend either to be changed into Latinos (Fawlty Towers's Manuel became a cuate in Hotel Fawlty) or into speakers of another Italic/Romance language, most commonly Italian or French (the "Franish" Dignitary in Frozen, to prove the latest example).
When there is a language barrier in the film, Spanish is most frequently translated as another Romance language. For instance, as Italian in Los Goonies (to which I have consecrated a post).

"He's from Barcelona."
"Well, I thought he's from Jalisco."
"Have you payed heed to his accent?"
"In which version?"

The only exceptions being Íñigo Montoya (in The Princess Bride/La princesa prometida), Buzz Lightyear's Spanish Mode (renamed Modo Romántico!), and Puss in Boots or Gato con Botas (in the Shrek film series): the former remains Castilian due to his Basque-sounding name (he is characterized as a brash and fight-loving swashbuckler, evoking the Basque regional stereotype [regarded in Spain] to a Spanish audience); the latter, due to his voice actor (in English original, Latin American and Castilian dubs), the celebrated Anthony Flags... Antonio Banderas. Buzz's "Modo Romántico" is clearly an over-the-top parody of the Latin Lover stereotype.

Egun on. Me llamo Íñigo Montoya. Tú mataste a mi aita...
En la Anglosfera, el gallardo latino.
En España... el gallardo vizcaíno (¿bizkaíno?).

"Miau, de Benito Pérez Galdós."
"No, no, no! Not Galdós!"
"Aún así, me recuerda a una novela en nuestro idioma, titulada Miau..."

In the latest installment of the Toy Story film series by Pixar (id est, Toy Story 3), Buzz Lightyear is reset as a dashing Castilian Casanova, the so-called Spanish Mode, which became Modo Romántico in the European Spanish dub. The Castilian accent was retained, but Buzz's voice actor (the legendary cantaor, or flamenco singer, Diego el Cigala!) compensating it by acting over the top, flamboyant and dashing.

Buzz Añoluz, Modo "Latin-Lover" Romántico

Castilian and Latino characters, Italians and sometimes the Southern French, are all depicted in Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, and Germanic media as "without the ability to self-regulate, and in serious need of paternal supervision and cultural refinement [···] fast-talking, violence-prone, sexually predatory, and criminally inclined [···] who overestimate their own prowess in predictably dramatic fashion. [···] motivated entirely by passions and carnal desires, and thus incapable of self-restraint." 

The same applies to counterpart cultures in fictional universes, for instance the Dornish in Westeros.

Consider the following joke:

Q: How many Dornishmen does it take to start a war?

A: Only one.

There is also the folk song "The Dornishman's Wife":

The Dornishman's wife was as fair as the sun,

and her kisses were warmer than spring.

But the Dornishman's blade was made of black steel,

and its kiss was a terrible thing.

The Dornishman's wife would sing as she bathed,

in a voice that was sweet as a peach,

But the Dornishman's blade had a song of its own,

and a bite sharp and cold as a leech.

As he lay on the ground with the darkness around,

and the taste of his blood on his tongue,

His brothers knelt by him and prayed him a prayer,

and he smiled and he laughed and he sung,

"Brothers, oh brothers, my days here are done,

the Dornishman's taken my life,

But what does it matter, for all men must die,

and I've tasted the Dornishman's wife!"

In the latest season of Game of Thrones, Dornish Lover Oberyn Martell (played by Pedro Pascal) lived up to his reputation as a bisexual sexoholic, who cohabited with his partner and has had countless romances. His untimely death will lead, in the next season, to the entrance of hitherto neutral Dorne into the struggle for power.

Oberyn, we hardly knew you...

(Rumour has it that Andalusia (southern Spain) will stand in for Dorne on screen. Let's hope this becomes real and the producers don't turn to Croatia once more...)

The passionate Mediterranean versus the cool Northerner, what is called the "Saxon/Latin" divide. The Spaniard, Italian, Latino, or Dornishman in fiction of a Germanic language is, in the "hierarchy of races", below the more composed, fairer Northern Westerners, and above the non-Caucasians. It's a liminal position (liminal: on a threshold or boundary). Exotic, yet familiar. Sensual, yet not savage. More childish, yet not completely foolish.

I once had a conversation about this divide in the Occident, and this conversation is to be transcribed in this blog. It contains these words:

Una de las dos Europas te partirá el corazón.

RACISM IN "DAS GALLEY"?

The article "Das Galley", which I have recently written, may have appeared racist to some readers.

The intention of said post is not racist or otherwise offensive (leftist, for instance).

The word "negro" was used by Oscar Wilde to refer to the ethnically Sub-Saharan officers on the galley. Thus, Wilde should be the one blamed, if there is any blame. "Negro" is more or less positive (United Negro College Fund), but this Spanish word has given rise to a particularly offensive cognate in the English language (there would never be a United N***er College Fund!)...

Actually, it struck me as a child that Anglophones can tell the difference between "sauce" and "salsa". To them, "salsa" is one specific kind of "sauce" (hyperonymy/hyponymy). Likewise, "queso" is one specific kind of "cheese." And "sombrero" is one specific kind of "hat."
The same observation can be said about "nap" and "siesta". Or, if you're in for something more outré and Carrollian, about "flamingo" and "flamenco" (imagine flamingos dancing flamenco, dressed in Andalusian folk costumes!).

But this Anglo-Spanish relation can be zigzagged as well. The reptile whose scientific name happens to be Alligator mississippiensis and whose Castilian (European Spanish) denomination is "caimán del Misisipí" (or simply "caimán", for short) is known in some parts of the Americas as "lagarto", id est, "lizard." Now this would have surprised me... hadn't I known that the English word that lends itself to the scientific name is actually a metathesis ("ligator" for "lagarto") . Imagine some conquerors, or conquistadores, having come over from Castile (the Spanish heartland, which they call Castilla) to found a new colony, in the days of Charles V. They land in a swampy region in springtime, and the glades are rife with blossoms of all shapes and colours. Thus they decide to call the place "Flowering" (Florida). What kind of strange logs are there, basking on the shores? They have eyes! Back in Castile, we have much smaller lizards (lagartos)! The English arrive after the Spaniards, and they take the word "lagarto" to call those reptiles, since the English have no word themselves (unlike the Castilian conquistadors, who took the croc-like reptiles for lizards, the Britons have at least seen that they're not European lizards). And from "a lagarto" to "a ligator", easier to pronounce for an English speaker ("lagarto" sounds way too cacophonic in English), there is a teeny tiny step.

Un señor lagarto.
NOT "a gentlemanly lizard".

Known in Spanish (even in Castilian!) as
"El lagarto Juancho", i.e. "Jack the Lizard".

Call a spade a spade, and it will prove dull, as in ordinary. Call a spade a pica, and every reader or listener will make an O with his/her lips.
After all, a rose by any foreign name, such as a rosa (with a short O and a final A), will always display a difference to the Tudor rose in scent, shape, colour...