The Rest Is History - 275: Argentina: The Welsh Colony

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

Why are there Welsh speakers born in Argentina? Join Tom and Dominic to understand the fascinating and unlikely story of a Welsh colony in the Southern Hemisphere - and whether they remain there today. Join The Rest Is History Club (www.restishistorypod.com) for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. hello welcome to the rest is history and our ongoing world cup epic and today we are discussing one of the great titans of world cup football argentina and dominic we we talked a lot about argentinian history didn't we we did in In the context of Argentina's football pedigree when we did our World Cup episodes. But you have got a kind of slightly left field theme today. Anyway, you explain. So we have done quite a lot of Argentinian history this year. We did four episodes on the Falklands War. And then we did the history of the World Cup, in which obviously

Argentina do play an enormous part because they take part in the first final in 1930. And the story of football in Argentina is a fascinating example of kind of nation building and creating an identity. And in a way, there's an element of that in this story as well. Because this story is a story about Patagonia, and a particular aspect of Patagonian history, Tom. Patagonia? Yeah. The only thing I really know about Patagonia is that it is one of the great places for dinosaurs. It is.

So they have Patagotitan, which is, I think, discovered very close to the area that you're going to be talking about today. I think, well, there's a place that I'm going to be talking about that has a dinosaur museum, and I was going to bring that up to please you, Tom, because I know you like these things. Oh, thank you. Thank you.

I don't want people to say that I don't think about you when I make the notes for these episodes, because I really do. I'm very touched. Very touched. So Patagonia, for people who don't know, it's in the far south of Argentina and indeed of Chile. It's an area of about 400,000 square miles. It's vast. I want to call it a wasteland and that seems too harsh. It's a land of steps and mountains and lakes and fjords. It's twice the size of Spain. So it's roughly the size of Spain and France put together, maybe a little bit smaller. So if you think about the population

of Spain and France combined, so you're talking about well over 100 million people, Patagonia has a population of only about a million. So it's very, very underpopulated. And Dominic, would you describe it as a green, misty, mythical landscape? I might actually. I might actually, Tom. A place of bards and... Is that where you're angling from? And harps.

Yeah. Well, you're trying to give that where you're angling and harps yeah well you're trying to you're trying to give away where we're going are we going yeah you're going to give away where we're going teams so but originally when the spanish arrived in the 16th century there were people in patagonia it wasn't completely unpopulated there were indigenous peoples who lived as hunter-gatherers and they they traveled around in little sort of dugout canoes in the fjords and the rivers and things. Later on, some of them rode horses. So these were groups of indigenous peoples called things like the Tehuelches and the Chonos. And they're pretty much all died out now.

And when you say died out, do you mean wiped out? Sometimes by violence, more often by disease, or simply, frankly, assimilation. So their distinctiveness has faded. Their distinctiveness has been eroded. They haven't completely disappeared, but largely disappeared. There was another group called the Mapuches. They moved south in the 16th century from more northern areas of Chile and Argentina, pushed south by the Spanish. And they're actually the largest indigenous group that are there today. So Europeans arrive in Patagonia in the 16th century, most famously

Magellan, Ferdinand Magellan, who sails around the world. He lands in August 1520, and it's there that Patagonia gets its name. So one of his, this chronicler who's kind of traveling with him, who's called Francisco Vázquez, he calls them after a character called Patagon, who is a giant in a kind of one of those very early novels that you get in Spain. Sort of a... Tirol LeBlanc, that kind of thing.

Exactly. So it's one of those chivalric novels. And Dominic, it's wonderful. So I hadn't realised that it was named after a giant, but that again is perfect, bearing in mind the gigantic size of the dinosaurs that were on this landscape. Back on the dinosaurs again.

Yes, but despite the dinosaurs, Tom, Europeans do not move into Patagonia in large numbers. By the way, if anyone wants to read about Patagonia per se, you must have read this, In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin. Yes. Have you, Tom. Europeans do not move into Patagonia in large numbers. By the way, if anyone wants to read about Patagonia per se, you must have read this In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin. Yes. Have you, Tom? Brilliant, brilliant, kind of haunting, beautiful book. One of the great examples of travel literature. I absolutely recommend it. Anyway, Chile and Argentina become independent in the 19th century, and they're kind of competing a little bit for Patagonia. The border is not set. Nobody really wants to go and live there, but they want it anyway. So they're sort of bickering about where the border will be.

Will it be along the top of the Andes? Or will it be the drainage basins of the rivers? This is very geography. So I don't actually really know what that means. But anyway, this is a crucial question and very important for Chileans and Argentinians. The issue is, how can they persuade anyone to go and live there? Because obviously, if you emigrate to Argentina from Spain or from Italy, where most people come from, you don't really want to go and live in Patagonia in the sort of steppes and lakes and fantastic mountains. You know, Gore-Tex hasn't yet been invented. Right.

So you want to go and live in Buenos Aires and drink Malbec and eat steaks and, you know gore-tex hasn't yet been invented right so you want to go and live in buenos aires and drink mulbeck and eat steaks and you know dance and invent the tango yeah right talk to the ancestors of borges patagonia is not for you however this is where a man enters the story tom called michael jones and would he could he conceivably be Welsh? He could be Welsh. I swore when I prepared this that I would not, I would not attempt Welsh accents because for an Englishman to do that, even though I do have Welsh blood, Tom, for an Englishman to do that would be a terrible, terrible thing. But I may sometimes slip.

So if you hear a Pakistani gentleman on this podcast, it's Dominic pretending to be Welsh. Because that is the stereotype. When English people attempt a Welsh accent, they end up sounding like they're from Karachi or something. So Michael Jones is born in 1822. He's a Congregationalist minister. And he has gone down in history as the founder of Ulladva, which means the colony. Now, I should warn you, there are a lot of Welsh in this podcast.

And so, again, for the Welsh listeners, there will be a lot of absolutely atrocious – I mean, Welsh is impossible, absolutely impossible to pronounce as an outsider. And I don't say that in the spirit of not having attempted. I've actually looked up a lot of these things and made a real effort. But it will almost certainly be abject. So I apologize for it in advance. Anyway, he is born in, do you want to know where he's born, Tom? Merthyr Tydfil. No, Llanrithlyn, Llanrithlyn, in Merioneth, which is in Gwynedd, which is in North Wales.

So he's born there in 1822. He's very serious. He's very Welsh. He's very non-conformist. He spent a little time in America, and then he comes back to become the minister at Bwlchnuath in Carmarthenshire. Anyway, it's better here than Bwlchnuath. And he is a political radical. He's a nonconformist. And he is horrified by something, Tom, which he has every right to be horrified by. In the 1840s in Britain, there was a big inquiry into education in Wales, which many of our Welsh listeners will immediately be grinding their, gnashing their teeth and, you know, rending their garments. And Dominic, it's possible that we will already have discussed this.

Oh my word. This is what happens when you do things out of order, Tom. Yeah. So we're recording this before we do our episode on Wales. Yeah. Which I suspect that this topic will come up. So we may already have mentioned it, but just in case we haven't. Exactly. Sometimes we've had grief on the, but just in case we haven't. Exactly. Sometimes we've had grief on the rest of history for not doing enough Welsh history.

Now we're doing loads. Welsh is everywhere. All right. So there's a big inquiry into education and they say don't teach in Welsh. It's backward. It's rubbish. Teach in English.

The historian Kenneth Morgan, Tom, he calls this the Glencoe and Amritsar of Welsh history. Strong words. Strong words indeed, yes. Because kids in Wales had to, if they spoke Welsh, they were punished. A lot of schools used something called the Welsh knot, where they hung something around your neck and it had the letters WN on. So Welsh knot.

And at the end of the day, basically, if you spoke Welsh, the Welsh knot was put around your neck. And then the next person the Welsh knot was put around your neck, and then the next person to speak Welsh was put around his neck. And at the end of the day, the child who had the Welsh knot around his neck was beaten. There's an element of a fun game about that, but also an element of torture and of repression of a language. But as I have learned from Martin Jones's book, it's more complicated, isn't it, than just... It is a bit. ...kind of English supremacy or whatever.

It's people in Wales wanting their children, Welsh parents wanting their children to be able to. Tom, we're doing a podcast about Wales now. We shouldn't. This is about Argentina. Okay. Sorry. Sorry.

Yes. Sorry. Anyway, listen, it's anarchic already. And we haven't even gone into some of the Welsh words. Michael Jones, he is outraged by this and he wants to set up a new Wales. And he thinks about doing it in America, but he's been to Ohio and he thinks, rubbish, no good. Because he notices that when Welsh people go to America, they lose their Welshness very quickly. They become assimilated. They're surrounded by

English people and Germans and whatnot. And the Welshness evaporates. He doesn't like that. And this would not be the first time it had happened, that Welsh people had gone to North America and lost their Welshness. Because, of course, there is the famous tale of Prince Madoc. Are you familiar with? I'm not. So the story is that in the end of the 12th century, the late 12th century, the reign of Henry II, the son of Owen Gwynedd, Prince Madoc, is so upset that he and his brothers are squabbling and fighting

and killing each other, that he sails across the Atlantic and founds a Welsh colony in North America. What? Post-Vikings, but pre-Columbus? Yes. So 300 years before Columbus. Crikey. I haven't heard this.

This definitely happened. Only the evidence for it has been lost because the Welsh very rapidly got assimilated. But Jefferson believed it. Into Native Americans? Yes. There are Welsh Native Americans. So this became something that was very strongly believed in the Elizabethan period, where it was used as a justification for, ironically, English rule in North America. Because they said that, well, you know, Elizabeth is a Tudor, therefore she's kind of Welsh,

so therefore she can lay claim to the whole of North America. I think that seems absolutely reasonable. And this was a tradition that passed down, as I say, to Jefferson, who when he sent off Lewis and Clark on their expedition into the wilds of North America, one of the things, well, so a paleontological link, he wanted them to find mastodons because he believed that they were still out there. But also he wanted to find the Welsh-speaking Native Americans that he thought would be out there as well. And what luck?

Not much luck. Oh, that's a bit disappointing. Well, because they- They didn't exist. They, that's a bit disappointing. Well, because they... They didn't exist? They'd been assimilated. Right. Well... Illustrating the...

Michael Jones's point. Michael Jones's whole point, yeah. Michael Jones. I don't know whether he knew about this. What was he? Prince Madoc. Prince Madoc. I bet he did.

I absolutely bet he did. Because Welsh nationalists were obsessed by Prince Madoc. Right. Okay. Well, that's nice. So he, I promise we will get to urgency. Michael Jones is sitting there back in Wales and he thinks, where should we go? He has various plans.

He thinks about going to Australia, thinks about going to New Zealand, thinks about going to Palestine. Tom, that would have thrown a whole new element into the issue. Well, particularly since there is also the tradition of the British Israelites, that the lost tribes of Israel came to Britain and were the Welsh. Wow, I didn't know that. So, oh, wow.

The whole matrix would have imploded. It would have done. But his great plan initially is for Vancouver Island. He thinks Vancouver Island should be a bit of a Welsh colony. Then for some reason, I don't know what that reason is, he decides no, Patagonia. And maybe the reason is this, that the Argentines are quite keen on this, because as I said, the Argentines and Chile, the border is not yet established because there's business of drainage basins, Tom. So the Argentines think a load of Welsh people are

going to come over here, settle this on our behalf. Brilliant. It's win-win. So they offer Michael Jones 100 square miles along the Chubut River in Patagonia. They pass a law to give it to the Welsh, and I quote, for the purposes of tilling the soil, improving industries, and introducing arts and sciences. The Argentines call this land Bahia Blanca, the White Bay, but the Welsh call it Ulladfa, the colony. And there's an exploratory visit in 1862 by a man called

Captain Love Jones Parry. Captain Love? Love, yeah. He's called Love Jones Parry. He's a great fellow, Tom. He was educated at rugby in Oxford. He's a future Liberal MP. Back in Britain? Yeah. Not in Argentina. There was an Argentine MP called Captain Love Jones Parry. That would be brilliant, but there isn't. He's very keen on

ice-dead fods, and his bardic name is Elfin. Elfin? Elfin, yeah. Anyway, he sails off. He goes to Buenos Aires, talks to the Interior Minister, who's's called mr rawson guillermo rawson that's a good spanish name yes then they go they sail down to patagonia to have a look they land at a place which they call they name it after captain love jones parry's baronial estate in north wales so he's a very you know he's a big grand man yeah he's a grand man and he has an estate called madryn and that there's a town in Argentina called Puerto Madryn, to this day, one of the major Patagonian settlements, actually. Anyway, he comes back, and he's very Eric the Red-like. So he comes back to Wales, and he says, oh my God, this place is absolutely brilliant. Absolutely. It's verdant. It is green. It is perfect for farming. Nothing could possibly

go wrong. This is the news that Michael Jones wanted to hear. Michael Jones, it may amaze you to know about Nationalist. He's very keen on the colony, but he doesn't want to go himself. So he thinks other people should go. So 153 Welsh settlers embark on the tea clipper mimosa. They pay £12 each. They assemble across Wales. Off they go. There are tailors, there are cobblers, there are carpenters, brickmakers and miners.

Most of them actually, it seems, probably came from South Wales, the coalfields, or indeed from England, from English towns. But were Welsh speakers? Was it a requirement that they be Welsh speakers? There were maybe some of the, quite a few of them Welsh speakers, I imagine. Was that a requirement? No, I don't think it was. But I thought the whole aim of the colony was to set up a Welsh speaking...

Well, you know how these things are. I think there's a slight difference in what's happening in Michael Jones's mind and what's happening in reality. I mean, a lot of them are Welsh speakers. Anyway, maybe I would be very interested to hear our Welsh listeners' views on this because they will maybe know more about it than I do.

The trouble with this story, actually, it's like a lot of the – because we've chosen slightly offbeat stories for this World Cup marathon. The trouble is, at the time, the sources aren't actually that good, because, of course, it's not a story that's commanding the world's attention. When is it? 1865. It's the end of the American Civil War. So everybody's eyes are not on the tea clipper mimosas sailing to Patagonia with fewer than 200 people.

Now, the great issue is there aren't many farmers. That's a terrible oversight. Well, they're all poets. No, they're cobblers, brickmakers, miners. That's no good. So there are very few farmers, Tom. Anyway, they sail across the Atlantic and in sight, at last, through the mists,

they see the green coastline of Patagonia awaiting them. And what happens to those Welsh men and women, Tom? We will discover after the break. See you then. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works.

We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisent is entertainment.com that's the rest is entertainment.com hello welcome back to the rest is history we are covering argentina almost specifically patagonia and dominic you left us uh on a thrilling cliffhanger what a cliffhanger the welsh colonists have arrived in patagonia without farmers to become farmers. And I suspect that that may prove to be a mistake, does it? Absolute disaster. Yeah, they arrived summer of 1865 for us. The winter of 1865 in Argentina, they arrive.

And I imagine I said before, it was a little bit like Eric the Red overselling Greenland. They get off the ship and they say, oh, or they're Welsh, they say, oh, and they are very, they've been on the ship for two months, Tom. So it's the late winter, I suppose. They don't have much food. They've run out of water and they just think, oh, geez, this is not what we were sold.

It's incredibly cold. It's very miserable. The land is utterly unsuitable for farming, which is why nobody lives there in the first place. They actually have to live in caves first. But that's quite druidical, isn't it? Very druidical, I suppose, but that's not really what they're encouraging. I have a sense that Michael Jones back in Wales

would very much welcome the cave dwelling, but the cobblers, miners, and so on on are thinking it'll be a bit more like Australia. I think that's how they imagined it would be, and it isn't. Anyway, they arrive there. They build a little fort in the valley of the Chubut River, which is now the town of Rawson, Tom, named after the interior minister who gave them the land. They built a fort. The fort was washed away by a flood. So that was very unfortunate. Some of them died. Some of the children died.

Again, very unfortunate. One nice bit, so one of the odd things about this series is it has, unusually for the rest of history, people behaving quite well. They get on quite well with the local indigenous people, the Tehuelche, who show them how to hunt. They show them how to hunt things called guanacos. Do you know what they are? No. They're a kind of llama.

So it's a bit like the Mayflower. It is a bit like the Mayflower. Yeah. Do they have kind of Thanksgiving where they eat a llama? Yeah. Some barabrith. Llama and leeks. Exactly. No, they don't. Not that I know of. So the Welsh, they make friends with the indigenous people. Over time, they establish Argentina's first irrigation system, Tom. Very impressive. Do they?

And they actually start to grow wheat. So they are making sort of inroads. And so how much of a feat is that? It's a great feat. It's a great feat. Argentina's most fertile wheatlands, I read in an article about Patagonia. Right. So, I mean, I'm not an expert on wheat, Tom, or on farming.

So don't probe too deeply. I suspected that would be the case. Okay, well, let's carry on. So lots of wheat. That's the wheat. That's all good. More people come 10 years later. So there's a depression in Wales.

Well, that's good, isn't it? I mean mean that's a measure of how well it must be doing so 500 people come about 20 people 20 to 30 people come from new york would you believe to come and join them so they're advertising god that must be quite a contrast well new york to patagonia yeah yeah gilded age new york the world of henry james yeah and uh isabella archer or whatever that's portraits of ladies, isn't it? But anyway, the world of all that. And growing wheat. And they're growing wheat in Patagonia with some Welsh nationalists. Methodists. Yeah. Great. Brilliant.

And presumably they're building chapels. They're building chapels. They have their own newspapers. One of the newspapers, Udravod, the discussion, lasted until 1961, would you believe? That's very good. Do they have choirs? They have choirs.

Ice deadfods? They have ice deadfods. They have all that stuff. They have a railway. So there's a guy called Lewis Jones. He's the guy behind the newspaper. He is very keen to raise funds for a railway. This is that golden age, Tom, of railway building by the British in South America.

And, of course, people who listen to our World Cup podcasts will know that the first people to play football in Uruguay and Argentina were often people who worked on the railways. Well, Lewis Jones wants to build a railway. He's got permission from the Argentine government, but he can't raise much money. He goes to England, very miserable, but to Britain. He gets on the train from London to Bangor, and he's on the train with his daughter, Eluned, and they're talking in Spanish. And a passenger overhears them and says, you know, it's very weird, people talking in Spanish, Welsh accents. What's the story here? He explains, he tells them all about his railway plan. And this man who's called Mr. Bell is an engineer, Tom. Oh, brilliant. And he says, I'll set up a company for you in Liverpool, which he does. And they build a railway.

Loads more Welsh settlers arrive, all going well, 400 more people. By the late 1880s, the railway is done. And the town of the railhead, they call it Tre Llyw, which means Tre is the Welsh for town, and Llyw is Lewis Jones. So it's named after Lewis Jones with his journey to England. They also go on an expedition to the Andes, very excitingly. They decide, let's try to expand our colony into the Andes. This doesn't go so well at first.

Four Welshmen, led by a man called John Daniel Evans, they go into the hills and they're attacked by Tahuelche Indians. Because this is the period in which governments across South America are sort of trying to expand their grasp. They see themselves very much as modernizers and nationalism is a huge part of that modernization project. And that often means pacifying Indians and sort of bringing outlying bits of their territories into the orbit of the kind of the metropole.

Because they want to draw lines on maps. Because they want to draw lines on maps, because they think they're terribly modern. They think, I mean, you see this in Brazil. We talked about this with Brazil. We talked about this all the way back in the Weird Wars podcast we did. I mean, I talked about the war in Canudos in the, I think that was in the late 1880s.

The Brazilian government fighting this kind of commune of kind of ex-slaves and things. I mean, there's this real sense of sort of trying to iron out discrepancies. Yeah, and nothing more modern than wiping out indigenous peoples in remote corners of the world. Exactly, exactly. The Indians are very concerned about this.

So when the Welsh pitch up, these Welsh guys are attacked by the Indians. Three of them are killed. John Daniel Evans escapes. It's in the middle of nowhere, this place where this happens. But the Welsh know it to this day, Tom, as Dufferin y Matheron, or as you and I would call it, the Valle de las Matires. The Valley of the Martyrs. So if I ever went to Patagonia, I would definitely go to the Valley of the Martyrs. Is there anything to see there?agonia, I would definitely go to the Valley of the Martyrs. Is there anything to see there?

No, nothing at all. You'd just go so you could say? Just how I've been there. And I'd say in both languages. They establish a new town. They call it Cumhufrid because one of the Welshmen, when he came over the top of the hill,

he looked down into the valley and he said, Weldina Cumhufrid, which means, well, that's a beautiful valley. Beautiful valley. It's a beautiful valley. Lovely, yeah. That's all lovely. And actually, this Welsh expansion is very good for the Argentines because they have,

finally in 1902, the issue about where the line in Patagonia is going to be drawn is decided. And they and the Chileans decide that the British will arbitrate for them and where the line is drawn. And the British, surprise, surprise, they send sort of commissioners who talk to the Welsh people and they say, oh, we'll draw, Argentina can have what it wants. So the British draw a line on the map. So the Argentines don't mention that when they're accusing us of piracy. No, they don't, do they? When they're dressing up. Who are they dressing up as pirates mrs thatcher and mrs thatcher and the um thingy billy billy world cup willie from the 1966 world cup yeah you don't

hear much about this line drawing in the andes um so actually in many ways this is a tremendous success and actually by the beginning of the First World War, in the lower Chubut Valley, which is the sort of place where the Welsh have gone to, there are about 12,000 people. In sort of Northern Patagonia generally, there's probably about 25,000, 23,000, 24,000. And what language are they speaking? Welsh, English, or Spanish? Well, this is the issue. They're actually speaking Spanish, Tom, very disappointingly, because of those people, only about a fifth are Welsh. So more people have come to join them. And actually, Michael Jones's original vision of this Welsh sort of this new Wales, where Welshness

would be preserved in Aspect, as it were, has already begun to be lost. Because more people have come, these people from New because more people have come these people from new york people from italy people from spain some people from buenos aires who think oh yeah i'll go farming in patagonia and so the sort of welshness is already being eroded plus you know argentina is a young country it's um you know not even a century old so at the end of that that first hundred years of its life you start to get much more interventionist Argentine governments, which are much more determined to be modern and to stamp their authority on the lands they rule.

And one element of that, obviously, is they expect people to speak Spanish and to be Argentine. So they start to move against the Welsh language. So as early as 1896, the Argentine government is insisting, stop teaching in Welsh in schools. You should be teaching in Spanish. And that only intensifies. But they're not using the... The Welsh knot. The Welsh knot. No, they're not. I don't know what they're doing. I mean, what happens, what you see basically after about, after let's say the beginning of the First World War is, I mean, a couple of things. One, people have now completely

stopped coming from Wales. So there were quite small numbers anyway. I mean, actually some historians, some Welsh historians say, if you add it all up, you're only talking about 4,000, 5,000 people who ever actually went from Wales. It was never a big mass phenomenon. So there's that. So people have stopped coming. But also, of course, Argentina itself is a being transformed by massive immigration from Italy. But also that Argentine miracle of the late 19th, early 20th century, where, you know, like Uruguay, which we talked about again in our Uruguay podcast, in our first World Cup podcast, these countries in South America that seem like they're going to be the great,

rich, progressive countries of the 20th century, there's a colossal depression in food prices with the First World War that goes on for decades. And that basically pulls the rug out from the Argentine economic miracle. And as a result of that, you have Argentine politics turning to much more kind of aggressive nationalistic populism. And that makes result of that, you have Argentine politics turning to much more kind of aggressive nationalistic populism. And that makes it much harder, obviously, for kind of complicated multiple identities to survive. Plus, there's also the fact that the new generations maybe don't want to dress up as Druids and have bardic ceremonies and things. They have other things on their mind. So by the the 1930s you have an argentine government that is much more ultra catholic ultra nationalist ultra hispanic so so welsh

methodism is not the thing it's not the flavor of them so basically welshness is pushed out of public life completely so as one historian puts it welsh becomes a language for the home and the chapel and the eisteddfod, but not in public. So they'd actually have been better off staying in Britain if they wanted to. Although, Tom, this is a story with a happy-ish ending. Oh, good. Okay. Because, you know, you've got a few thousand people really we're talking about. We'll come to the figures now at the end of the podcast. And they're still there. And there are still their chapels and their windmills and their tea houses,

often because of the harshness of the weather and stuff, corrugated iron roofs and things like that. But in 1965, they have their centenary. And that's when you see the first little upsurge of interest from Britain. Because basically in Britain, everyone's completely forgotten they ever existed. You get a little upsurge of interest in Britain. They're a curiosity now. They're obviously not a threat to Argentine identity. They're just a curiosity. So you get people visiting. And then a real boost to them, I would say, I'd be interested to know what Welsh

historians, specialists think about this. But it seems obvious to me, looking through the stories, seems obvious to me that a huge the stories, it seems obvious to me that a huge boost for them was the devolution to Wales in the 1990s. Because then that really sort of boosted a sense of Welshness and Welsh politicians and- First ministers going out to celebrate. This is exactly what happened. So 2001, the Welsh art druid visited Patagonia and the welsh devolved government sends teachers to patagonia to teach the welsh language which is really in battle and then you start getting so the bbc sent a report it did a lovely report in 2001 male choirs the chairing of the winning bard

the dance of the flower maidens the hushed conversations in the welsh language the sights and sounds of this ice dead fod are familiar to anyone acquainted with the culture of Wales. But what makes this particular event special is that it's taking place 8,000 miles away. You start to get loads and loads of stories. Great for travel writers, I can see. Exactly. There's another lovely story of 2014.

A professor from Cardiff called Wynne James went to Patagonia and And he wrote an article. He said, it was like visiting a parallel universe. In the Chubut Valley, I found myself singing Welsh hymns, eating a Welsh tea, watching Welsh folk dancing, and witnessing the traditional ceremony of the chairing of the bard. So is there anything that's not Welsh that isn't Eisteddfod's? I mean, are they playing rugby? I think their numbers are too small, small really to support a sort of rugby.

But also that's not uniquely Welsh because, of course, they play rugby in Argentina. Yes. And that's kind of English. You see, a lot of people think of rugby as intrinsically Welsh, don't they, because it's the Welsh national sport. But the rugby in Argentina is a product of the empire and the fact that late 19th century Argentina

was stuffed full of English public school boys. Yeah, like football, actually, or polo, indeed, or the gentlemen's clubs that you still see in Buenos Aires. So in 2015, the colony of Ladva celebrated its 150th anniversary and the first minister of Wales, who was then Carwin Jones, he went. I can't say the word Jones without slightly slipping into that kind of Karachi accent. Well, this is what comes of growing up in Shropshire, isn't it? It is, you see.

It is because Wales is very close. But of course, there is also- You're cowering behind Office Dyke. There's the residual fear, Tom. It never goes away. They could strike at any moment. That's why it's important to build more castles. That's the, I think most people in Shropshire will agree with that.

Sensible policies for a happier Shropshire. Yes. However, what's really interesting is that in the last couple of years, there were the first stirrings, I think they're still very much a minority taste, of people thinking that it's time to decolonize the narrative of Welsh Patagonia. Right. On the Nation Cymru website, Tom, you'll find an article. It'll amaze you to hear this comes from academia. Dr. Ian Johnson, he says, the Welsh people should confront the responsibility that the colonists

arrived in an unfamiliar country and settled lands that were morally not theirs to settle. The Welsh were settler colonists. They benefited from the support of the Argentine state and the inherent power dynamics of the relationship with the indigenous population. So maybe it's time Michael Jones must fall, Tom. Yeah, evidently. I don't think that's a campaign that's going to get very far, quite frankly. And actually, if you want to read about that, I mean, a very elliptical way, a very strange appearance of Patagonia in Welsh culture

is a series of books by a man called Malcolm Price. Have you ever read these books, Tom? They're novels. No. You're not a great novel reader. You read so much nonfiction, an intimidating amount of nonfiction, that you don't have time to read novels.

I love a Dickens. Yeah, Dickens is your go-to, but not Malcolm Price. No. Have you read Malcolm Price? I don't know. Maybe. What did he write? He wrote Last Tango in Aberystwyth.

Aberystwyth, mon amour. The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still. No. Is it about Aberystwyth? From Aberystwyth with Love. He wrote a whole series of books. A Tale of Two Aberystwyths. From Aberystwyth with love. He writes a whole series of books. A Tale of Two Aberystwyths? Oliver Aberystwyth?

No, because it's Welsh noir. That's what he does. He writes Welsh noir. I heartily recommend these books. They're very, very funny. Okay. But they're set in a parallel Wales in which the Patagonian settlement

turned into a much bigger deal than it did in reality. So each of the books is overshadowed, Tom, by the tragedy of the Patagonian War, or the Welsh-Vietnam, as he calls it. Oh, I must read it. That's brilliant. So if you dig through the books, you have to sort of piece together the history. A war broke out in 1960 between the colonists and spanish

speaking rebels and thousands of young men volunteered from wales to join the welsh foreign legion and they sailed across the atlantic to help their welsh brethren in patagonia and the war has left a terrible scar on the welsh psyche in these stories so that across west wales on the dunes at night you'll see groups of Patagonian veterans. Mourning. Mourning, yeah. I tell you what it reminds me of is, and to show that I do read novels,

Michael Chabon's Yiddish Policeman's Union. Yes, yes, yes. That's a good comparison. But all Welsh children in these books are taught about the Battle of Rhyo Carriog, which was a great victory for the Welsh and the great Welsh war hero, Zachariah Lovespoon, who won the Cross of Rio Cariog, which was a great victory for the Welsh and the great Welsh war hero, Zachariah Lovespoon, who won the Cross of Assaf for bombing.

But actually, Tom, the truth is, so actually the decolonisation narrative comes in, the Welsh behaved disgracefully in the war. It was a war crime. They bombed an orphanage. It was terrible. And Zachariah Lovespoon... Is a villain.

He wasn't even Welsh. He was an Englishman whose real name was Arthur Frobisher. Oh, no. Oh, you're ruining it for me. Oh, what a twist. I've given it away. No, no, no. But the books are great.

The books are great. I'm going to order them. So that concludes, Tom, our journey to Argentine history. So people who are listening to this thinking Peron, Evita. Gauchos. Gauchos. Borges, fine wines. No, you've been cruelly disappointed. I don't think cruelly at all.

And yet I hope entertained. Yeah. No, I think it's a wonderful surprise, and especially for our Welsh listeners. So if you go now to Patagonia, I mean, people do go. They go to Trelew or wherever, Rawson. They sort of go, and you can go and have tea in a little Welsh tea shop. And so there's about, estimates differ, but they're between one and 5,000 native Welsh speakers still there in Patagonia.

They'll be cheering in the valleys of Patagonia. I mean, it's fair to say they won't be cheering for England at all. No, of course not. But they will certainly be cheering for Wales. And so on that note, Tom, I will read you the anthem of Welsh Patagonia because they have. I won't sing it because I'm not exactly going to sing the Welsh National Anthem. It's the same tune as Land of My Fathers, the wonderful Welsh anthem,

so stirring. To my mind, actually, the most stirring of all national anthems, Tom. And Lewis Evans, who was the printer who set at the railway and stuff, he wrote it in about 1875. And this is the English translation. Patagonia is dear to me, the new land of the noble Welsh people. True freedom we breathe in our new country, far from the reach of oppression and betrayal. The Welsh have been lying broken in scorn. Well, thanks to the Radfa, from dust we are reborn. Our language of old we lord and esteem, while Camwy flows with shining stream.

Let Welshmen submit to the English no more. Their oppression is ended and silenced their roar. O Radfa, we praise, while the great white Andes, with its peak in the chamber of dawn. It's like listening to Michael Sheen and on that bombshell. Adios. Bye-bye.

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