Chaves

This dubbing has a history of more than 30 years, in which various chapters have been dubbed over time, many of them more than once. It is one of the dubbings most loved by the Brazilian public, being the main reason for the enormous success that the Mexican series had in the South American country.

Dubbing history
The dubbing of the series began in Brazil when Silvio Santos, owner of the Brazilian channel SBT (called TVS at the time) bought the rights to show Televisa's Mexican telenovelas on his signal, which were very famous at the time. When the files arrived in Brazil, Santos came across the comedy series El Chavo, which he had not bought, but which Televisa had sent him as a gift in case his station in São Paulo was interested in showing it. Santos at first did not believe it prudent to broadcast the comedy series, since he had never broadcast a Mexican series of these characteristics, having only bought comedies from the USA.

MAGA Version (Classic Dubbing)
At that time, the SBT or TVS studios in São Paulo functioned as dubbing studios, and their main manager was Marcelo Gastaldi. Silvio Santos approached Gastaldi, who owned the dubbing company Maga, who worked at the TVS studios, and asked if these series would really be successful in Brazil. Gastaldi analyzed the series, the jokes, the type of humor and thought that they would be successful, he even said that they would become very famous in Brazil. No artistic director of the SBT channel, much less Santos, sympathized with the series and it was with the help of Salathiel Lage that the series entered the programming grid. Gastaldi was then in charge of the casting and direction of the series.

Once a casting of actors was chosen, the series began to be translated and adapted. Who commanded the direction of the series was Gastaldi himself. Since he owned the studio, the work began to become a bit heavy and he left the direction in the hands of Potiguara Lopes, one of the main translators, thus Gastaldi dubbing only Chaves, the protagonist. Osmiro Campos, for his part, directed the largest number of episodes in the series, around 80%. As he was Gastaldi's right-hand man in the studio, Campos left the direction of dubbing, now doing other jobs in the studio. Who takes his place is Nelson Machado, who would be in charge at the end of the dubbing of the series. Potiguara would also leave the translation, a job that Machado would also assume.

As the comedy series has stand-alone episodes, Televisa sent four different packages of episodes in different years. These are called 'lotes' in Brazil, and there were four of them: 1984, 1988, 1990 and 1992. Some chapters were repeated between packages, so they were dubbed again, in order to correct any failure in the translation and/or adaptation.

Studio Gábia (DVD Special Dubbing)
In 2005, a company called Amazonas Filmes was in charge of launching Chaves' DVDs in Brazil. However, the distributor Televisa did not allow the dubbing of the classic version by Maga Studios to be maintained, and requested a redub, which was carried out in Gábia.

Since several members of the original cast of the dubbing (including the protagonist, Marcelo Gastaldi) had died, or were already retired, this dubbing received negative criticism, since it was considered nonsense, since people were used to classic dubbing.

Som de Vera Cruz/UniDub Studios (Modern Dubbing)
A series of episodes of the series, despite being dubbed in Brazil, are unpublished today, either because they were broadcast a long time ago, or only once, or very few times. For this reason, when the series was acquired by the Multishow channel, from Grupo Globo, one of SBT's commercial competitors, it ordered all the 'unpublished' episodes to be dubbed, and others whose classic dubbings have not been published again. The new cast, despite the changes, received greater reception among fans.

Cast

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Trivia

 * When the series was sent to Brazil, many scenes were not sent with an international track to be dubbed, so much of the music had to be replaced. Most of the themes used are by British musician John Charles Fiddy.
 * The opening sequence is not the same as the Mexican version either. In the original version, a narrator (Jorge Gutiérrez Zamora) introduces the series with a voice-over, naming each character and their respective actor. In Brazil, however, there are two different presentations, for the SBT channel:
 * In the first, various characters and scenes from the series are presented randomly, using the Brazilian himself as the musical theme, entitled Ai vem o Chaves (Here comes El Chavo). Above each scene, the word 'Chaves' is shown, as if it were drawn like a wad of ink across the screen.
 * In the second, a kind of movie sequence is shown, although with bluish backgrounds, and with a countdown of colored numbers. While the sequence of numbers appears in reverse (from 10 to 2), the faces of the characters appear between each number, the first being Chiquinha; then Professor Girafales; then Dona Clotilde; next, Kiko; then Dona Florinda; then Seu Madruga; then Seu Barriga; and at the end Chaves. This presentation using also the Brazilian himself as the musical theme, entitled Ai vem o Chaves. This opening dates from 1993, and was used by SBT until it stopped broadcasting the program in 2020.
 * In addition to adapting the show's songs, a large number of original theme songs were composed, including with the voice actors. Many of these musical themes were arranged by the musician and dubbing actor Mário Lúcio de Freitas.
 * The opening theme of the series in Spanish is "The Elephant Never Forgets", by the French composer Jean-Jacques Perrey, and based on Turkish March, by Beethoven. This is replaced in the Brazilian version by its own musical theme.
 * The series was a sweeping success in the Brazilian public, to the point that, in Brazil, there are the largest groups of the Fandom of the series.
 * Some episodes of the series are lost media, but have been found with their Brazilian dubbing, although not with their original Spanish audio. This made all these episodes broadcast solely and exclusively on Brazilian television.
 * Many of the names of the characters are adapted to the grammar of Brazilian Portuguese, which, in various aspects, is usually very different from the Spanish language.
 * The Brazilian free-to-air television channel SBT broadcast the series for 36 years, from 1984 to 2020, being the channel that has broadcast the series the most on the planet, being only surpassed by the Peruvian channel América Televisión, which broadcast it from 1979 to 2020.