Heidi (Latin American Spanish, 1978)

This dub is based on the original Japanese version, using the scripts translated in Spain for its European Spanish dubbing. As in Spain, the dubbing was a resounding success in Latin America.

Broadcast
The series was released in 1978, on Canal 5 in Mexico, a channel that broadcast the series uninterruptedly for 20 years, until 1998. Later, it would return to the same channel in 2000, being broadcast for the last time by CadenaTres. In 1994, it was also broadcast by Azteca 7.

Outside Mexico, the series was broadcast in practically the 19 Spanish-speaking countries in Central America, the Caribbean (including Cuba), and South America. The series is available in its entirety on YouTube, in Studio100 KIDS Español.

Cast

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Adaptation

 * This dubbing was distributed for Latin America by Claudio Guzmán and Charles Ver Halen. Guzmán was a Chilean producer, with an outstanding career in the United States, being mainly the producer and director of I Dream of Jeannie.
 * The Latin American Spanish dub uses the scripts translated in Spain by Margarita Ribes Escolano and Angelina Gatell Comas. This is explained because, at least until the 1990s, Spain used to distribute a large amount of Japanese audiovisual material, mainly anime of various genres, thus having greater communication with the Asian country than it could have in Latin America.
 * In the 70s and 80s, the series was presented as "El cuento de Heidi" ("Heidi's Tale"), although on television channels, it was named only as Heidi.
 * Like the European Spanish dub, the names are adapted to the grammar of the Spanish language, just as it is done in the Spanish translations of the original book by Johanna Spyri.
 * One of the most striking cases of adaptation is that of the sheepdog Joseph, who in both Spain and Mexico is known as "Niebla" (Spanish for Fog). The name was chosen by the Spanish translator Angelina Gatell Comas as a secret homage to the Chilean poet and writer Pablo Neruda, and his female dog named Niebla. The reason for the secrecy of the reference was that, when Spain produced the dubbing, the dictator Francisco Franco was still in power, and Neruda was politically opposed to his ideologies, especially due to his active participation in the Spanish Civil War, on the opposite side to Franco.
 * Despite the fact that throughout Latin America, the narration was done by Cristina Camargo, and Francisco Colmenero, in its broadcast on Canal 5 Mexico (the first channel to broadcast it) the narration was done by another unknown actress. The opening and ending were omitted as well.
 * Unlike the European Spanish television version, the entire soundtrack was translated and adapted into Spanish, even releasing records. However, in its television broadcast in the 1980s and 1990s, the songs in the episodes were kept in Japanese, except for the opening and ending themes.

"The Story of Heidi" Spanish Version
Very recently, a strange dub of the same anime was discovered, which turned out to be a Latin American Spanish version of the US English dub entitled "The Story of Heidi", which was called by the same name, but in Spanish ("La Historia de Heidi"). This version was distributed possibly shortly after it was released in the US and UK, being the second product based on the character distributed by Guzmán and Van Halen. Currently, only audio records in low quality of this strange dub remain, and the movie pictures in this format is lost-media. Also, the cast is different, and tries to imitate the voices of the original dub. The movie with this dub is available in Facebook here, where the low-quality audios were placed over the scenes from the anime in its remastered version.

Unlike the Italian dub of this alternative version in English, this one tries to be much more faithful to the original dub (and therefore, to the Japanese version), modifying the script translated from English to adapt it as much as possible to the anime script.