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They do have different pronunciations, it's just than most speakers have lost the distinction. B is plosive and V is fricative.

Some regions still make that difference, at least senior people do. I had a language teacher from old Castille who sound her spelling of v and b very clearly. She made the distinction between 'll' and 'y' clear as well, with 'll' sounding as a modified 'l', a cross between 'li' and 'ye'.

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If most speakers have lost the distinction, then by definition the dialects that still distinguish the two are more marginal, so how can they be considered normative? Sure, historically they were consistently distinguished if you go back far enough, but what difference does it make wrt modern Spanish?

To modern Spanish, very little difference. It was not consistent in past times either, with classic authors from the Spanish golden age using varying spellings.

Just wanted to point out that the variation of sound is not random, but with the sound tied to the letter. Also Spain has something that English does not, which is an official organisation studying the language and making official rules recognising how it's used at different contexts and zones.

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