Argentina’s wonderful Welsh side!
A cheery corner of Patagonia is an intriguing Welsh outpost
ON the surface, the tiny town of Gaiman is much like any Patagonian pueblo. Brightly painted buses rattle down the main street of Avenida de eugenio tello, past vintage Ford trucks whose battered bumpers bear the signs of a long journey.
From the colourful shops, South American music plays.
But look closer and you will notice something curious. Above the primary school, Welsh flags flutter. On the high street, bilingual road signs issue orders in two languages and all around the main square, boards brandishing the red dragon point the way to various ‘Casa de Té Gales’ (Welsh tearooms).
The story of how these incongruous emblems came to exist in Argentina’s remote Chubut province is intriguing.
nearly 150 years ago, on July 28, 1865, a group of 153 weatherbeaten Welsh people made it to the shores of South America, having set sail from Liverpool two months earlier on a former tea- clipper known as the Mimosa. Some had perished along the way.
Their dream was to set up ‘Y Wladfa’; a Welsh colony, where they could speak their language and preach their religion, free from english repression.
Making landfall on the bay of Golfo nuevo, they named their first stop Porth Madryn, after one of their leader’s estates in Wales. Unable to find a fresh water supply, they continued the long and arduous journey inland, following the River Chubut on foot, through the uncharted Patagonian steppe (desert).
ALONG the way they established a string of settlements; first the regional capital Rawson, then later such Celtic-sounding places as trelew and trevelin, which today make up the Welsh community in Argentina. though not the first to be established, Gaiman is the centre of Patagonia’s ‘ little Wales beyond Wales’, as Congregationalist minister and settlement leader Michael D. Jones called it.
Leaving my base at the lovely Posada Los Mimbres, a centuryold farm on the outskirts of town, I follow the Welsh trail, beginning where most tourists do — in one of the tearooms.
Off the main square, the appropriately named Plas y Coed (Place of trees) is the oldest, tucked away on Avenida de Michael D. Jones, while neighbouring ty nain, with its enticing ivy-clad exterior, is also popular.
I pick ty te Caerdydd, on the south bank of the Chubut, whose chintzy interiors proudly remember the day when Princess Diana dropped in for tea in 1995. Sand- wiches, pastries and cakes follow, including the torta Galesa; a dense Welsh fruitcake.
Walking off the indulgence, I head for the ‘Primera Casa’; the so- called First house, established in 1874 by David Roberts and his wife Jemima Jones.
Under a tin roof that would originally have been made from mud stands his travelling trunk, and in the pantry are machines used to churn butter.
I meander along the banks of the Chubut to two more Welsh attractions: the twin chapels of Bethel and new Bethel, the oldest of which was built in 1884 to house the growing Welsh congregation.
In the early years, when the community struggled to establish crops and suffered from floods, these buildings provided welcome sanctuary; a place to speak Welsh, sing hymns and seek guidance.
though the Welsh found it near impossible to grow anything in this desert-like climate for the first ten years, they eventually learned to harness the power of the river and created the first irrigation system in Argentina.
this allowed them to produce the prize-winning wheat which became their salvation. this unusually green, luscious landscape leads many to liken Gaiman’s scenery to the valleys of Wales.
My last stop is the Museo histórico Regional, where I meet Fabio González. his name may not sound very Welsh but his mother, Luned González (maiden name Roberts), is a descendant of the first Welsh settlers.
Luned is in Anglesey giving a speech, so Fabio shows me around the museum, housed in the town’s old railway station, which from the 1880s onwards, connected Gaiman with other towns along the Chubut valley. ‘When I went to chapel as a boy, we would read the Bible in Spanish, not Welsh, but recently, there is a new awareness of the Welsh heritage in Chubut,’ he says. ‘Young people today feel part of a culture to be celebrated.’
I admire artefacts from the Mimosa, including black-andwhite photos of the first settlers, standing in their Victorian clobber amid the vast, empty plains.
It is clear the people of Gaiman have come a long way. today, there is an estimated 50,000strong Welsh community living in Patagonia. though only 5,000 or so speak the language, it is still ‘a little Wales beyond Wales’.