Patagonia with Huw Edwards

It's almost impossible to believe that such a place exists.

A WOMAN SPEAKS IN WELSH

A little Wales on a faraway continent,

where the familiar and the exotic come together in a magical way.

A rich blend of cultures,

150 years in the making.

TRANSLATION FROM WELSH:

How the Welsh came to be here, and fought to preserve

their language and culture, is a truly inspiring story.

They mastered a desolate and hostile frontier,

armed with remarkable faith and endurance.

It is our very own Wild West epic.

I've been following in the footsteps of those intrepid pioneers,

fulfilling a lifelong dream to visit Patagonia.

And to see for myself this special corner of South America,

with its unexpected reminders of rural Wales.

150 years ago, a group of Welsh people set sail

and crossed the Atlantic in search of a new life in South America.

They gambled everything on this great venture.

And this story of daring and courage

and enterprise still has the power to fire the imagination.

It is quite simply

one of the greatest adventures in the history of Wales.

The date is Friday 28th July, 1865,

and the crossing, in rather primitive conditions,

has taken two months.

The pioneers, around 160 of them,

are about to set foot, for the first time, on the shores of Argentina.

But what they discover here is not what they'd been promised.

They landed on a barren shore,

with no reliable supply of fresh water,

a small advance party was waiting for them,

but they'd made scant preparation for the arrival.

Local historian, Fernando Coronato, showed me the makeshift

man-made hollows in the rock that may have been used as stores,

or even, he believes, as temporary shelters.

Fernando, it's an amazing place, with an amazing view, really,

of the bay, but these remains, why are they so significant?

What are they?

They are important because they are the remains of the first

Welsh footstep in Patagonia.

It's a mark of the hopes of the people who were

searching for a new land, to build a new life

with freedom and, well, sun and fair weather.

Legend has it that the Welsh sheltered in these natural caves.

That may or may not be so, but,

nonetheless, there is very clear evidence of their presence here.

Still visible today are the marks they left as they dug out

clay blocks in their first attempts at building.

-When you look at how primitive, how basic this is...

-Yes.

In the first month after they arrived,

did they suffer a lot of hardship?

I mean, what happened to the women and children?

There was four babies died,

and another person,

Catherine Davies, died, too.

Catherine Davies was from Llandrillo, she was 38.

Her baby son had already died

on that long voyage across the Atlantic.

I'm just struck, Fernando, by the thought that although they had

made some preparations, it wasn't enough, was it?

Is it because people were simply too idealistic

and they wanted it to succeed, they hadn't really thought it through?

Well, the propaganda had been very strong in Wales

and Patagonia was...

drawn too fantastic a region.

And the reality is not that way.

There's no easy way to say this, but those first settlers

had been very badly misled, and here's the proof.

It's a little booklet for prospective migrants,

written by Hugh Hughes in 1862.

He would be part of that first wave.

And in it he describes splendid expanses of green forest,

herds of animals, rich pastures.

"And the rainfall," he says, "is as regular as it is in Wales."

At best, the leaders of this venture were guilty of wishful thinking.

The negatives ignored, the positives greatly exaggerated.

There was a heavy price.

Before long, this unforgiving terrain had claimed its first victim.

Daffyd Williams was a cobbler from Aberystwyth

and on his first day ashore, he clambered up from the beach and started walking.

He was looking for that fertile valley

that he'd read about in the booklet.

He was never seen again.

And two years later, his remains were found at a place

called Pant Yr Esgyrn, the Vale Of Bones.

And he was identified by his ring

and his cobbler's thimble.

So, why venture to this back of beyond,

which had resisted the efforts of all previous settlers?

It was the idea of Michael D Jones.

This outlandish project began to form when Jones saw a problem

that he felt was set to destroy the Wales he loved.

Welsh coal-mining was attracting thousands of English speakers

to South Wales, and Jones feared that the native language

and culture would quickly disappear.

He believed that the only way that Welshness could be preserved

was by establishing a new Wales in one of the most remote places

on Earth, where no other language or culture would ever dilute it.

So, when the Argentine government offered an isolated tract of land

along the Chubut River, it seemed ideal.

And Jones set about persuading able Welsh-speaking people

to give up everything for a new life in the wilderness.

For Michael D Jones, the departure of the Mimosa

in 1865 with 153 people on board, was the realisation of a dream.

This parched landscape of scrub and thorns

couldn't be more different from the Wales they'd left behind.

But, armed with remarkable faith and endurance,

they pushed on 40 miles to their promised land.

The river valley, where they hoped to build a new life.

It really is no exaggeration to say that this is the life source

of this part of Patagonia. This is the River Chubut.

The River Camwy, as the Welsh used to call it, flows for over 500 miles

from the Andes in the west, over to the Atlantic in the east.

And the river has been an immense blessing,

creating fertile land and sustaining life,

but it's also been a bit of a curse at times,

especially in the winter months,

overflowing its banks and causing some pretty destructive flooding.

Even though the settlers' first wooden homes were swept away,

it seemed there was no alternative but to settle close to the river.

The snows and rains that caused the flooding were falling far away

in the Andes, and not on the parched and barren soil

that formed the greater part of the land that they'd been given.

It is difficult today to get a real sense of the extreme suffering

and hardship of those first few years,

and there are some unsettling reports.

In 1871, it was suggested that the Welsh had been reduced

to eating grass in order to survive.

Emergency supplies were sent by the Argentine government.

The Royal Navy brought in British help.

No wonder that one of the settlers loudly proclaimed,

"God save John Bull."

There was mutiny in the air

and in 1867, most of the settlers were ready to abandon the venture,

but they were persuaded to give the colony one last chance.

And then came one vital innovation that changed everything.

And without it, the modern state of Chubut in Argentina might simply not exist.

In a dazzling feat of engineering, those early pioneers dug a network

of irrigation canals across the valley and turned the desert green.

The Welsh have certainly left their mark on Patagonia

and made an enormous contribution,

but there is no contribution greater than this one -

bringing a supply of water over many miles, into the middle of this

barren land, and transforming it into a fertile plain.

And today's farmers are still benefiting from that Welsh achievement.

Near his small farm in the Chubut Valley, Benito Jones showed me

how much this breakthrough means.

He still speaks the language that his forefathers came here to protect,

and though the accent is different, it is still reassuringly familiar.

TRANSLATION FROM WELSH:

It's only from space that you can really grasp what was achieved here.

A vast green strip, surrounded by semi-desert.

The same irrigation system that made agriculture possible here

still sustains Aldwyn Brunt,

farming in much the same way as his ancestors.

His home is something of a time capsule, full of relics,

paying homage to the colony's founding fathers.

TRANSLATION FROM WELSH:

There's even a first-hand account of those pioneering days,

a memoir written by Benjamin Brunt in old age.

HE READS IN WELSH

Within just one decade, Benjamin Brunt was winning prizes

in the US and in France for the quality of his wheat and his barley.

But it took many years for those farms to prosper,

and the Welsh colony might not have survived those early days

without the help of the indigenous people, the nomadic Tehuelche

Indians, who traded with them and taught them to hunt for food.

By and large, it was a remarkably peaceful coexistence,

but it is ironic that the Welsh,

in their search for a haven from discrimination at home,

were now taking land from an oppressed minority

on another continent.

We should add a note of caution

about this bond between the Welsh and the native peoples.

There's been a tendency to draw a rather sentimental picture about it.

For a start, the Argentine government PAID the native peoples

not to attack the Welsh and to allow them to settle.

There was plenty of trade between the two communities.

The Welsh bartered things like bread and butter and sugar,

and got rather more valuable things in return such as animal skins

and blankets and ostrich feathers.

And there are plenty of suggestions of questionable Welsh behaviour,

such as buying horses with a few loaves of bread

and selling alcohol to the native peoples, and that is something

that caused untold misery, as it had done in the American West.

Crossing this vast landscape today,

you find very few traces of the Tehuelche Indians.

They were dealt a crushing blow in the 1880s

when Argentine troops carried out a campaign to kill

the indigenous people and seize their lands.

To their credit, the Welsh often intervened, but it's no wonder

that this genocidal campaign provoked attacks on white settlers.

In March of 1884, a party of four young Welshmen were cornered

at this very remote spot by a group of native Indians.

We don't know why. Had the Indians been provoked in some way?

We can't be sure.

What we do know is that three of the Welshmen were killed

in rather brutal circumstances.

One of them, John Daniel Evans, made a rather miraculous escape.

He had a detailed knowledge of the Indian trails in these parts,

and in a tale that's passed into legend,

his horse, Malacara, carried him away to safety and saved his life.

This is the memorial, installed by the Welsh

to remember the three who lost their lives in that dreadful incident.

When they gathered here to mark the event,

they sang a simple Welsh hymn.

VOICES SING

Within a year, that sole survivor, John Daniel Evans, would play

a pivotal role in the next chapter of the colony's history.

He was the pathfinder for a band of explorers - most of them Welshmen -

on a mission to open up the far west of Patagonia.

The native people had long spoken of rich, fertile lands,

surrounded by snow-capped peaks.

With no room to expand in the Chubut Valley,

more farmland was needed to attract new immigrants from Wales.

The adventurers were known as the Rifleros,

or Rifleman of Chubut,

and every year their descendants re-enact their arrival.

And what we have today is a taste,

a hint of the pioneering spirit of 1885.

These are today's Rifleros.

They're on their way to the top of the mountain,

to raise a banner to celebrate the discovery of this remarkable place.

Those pioneers had crossed the plains for hundreds of miles,

and they got their first glimpse of this paradise, this fertile land.

Their new home - Cwm Hyfryd, "Splendid Valley".

TRANSLATION FROM WELSH:

The Rifleros are very proud of their pedigree,

and their direct links to the founding fathers.

At last, here was the paradise that the Welsh had dreamed of.

The rich soils of the valley floor were ideal to grow crops

and there was plenty of pasture on the surrounding slopes to raise livestock.

And, of course, cowboy culture came with the territory.

This is Alejandro Jones and he farms in the traditional way

on land pioneered by his great-grandfather.

He combines pride in his Welsh heritage with a love

for the rugged Argentine way of life in the great outdoors.

TRANSLATION FROM WELSH:

It is remarkable how the Welsh adapted to life on this wild frontier.

And the clearest symbol of that is the asado,

an outdoor roast, where the whole animal is cooked on an open fire.

The Green family invited me to taste the experience for myself

at their home near Trevelin in Cwm Hyfryd.

TRANSLATION FROM WELSH:

The asado is a ritual that's enjoyed all over Argentina,

the perfect occasion to get together with family and friends.

But here there's one striking difference.

As the conversation flows, the guests slip easily between Spanish and Welsh.

MAN SINGS IN WELSH

The familiar and the exotic are combined in a rather special way by Vincent Evans.

A Welsh folk song about a lovelorn maiden on the banks of the River Dee,

performed half a mile away, in the shadow of the Andes.

I think some viewers will wonder why do you persist with this

effort to speak Welsh. You speak Spanish, why do you make the effort?

It's because we feel, we feel Welsh and it's something...

I don't know.

-It's important.

-Yes.

-Yes. How about you?

Fi caru... I love, I love the Welsh language.

I love Cymru.

It's such a... I can see that, you know, it's a very emotional thing.

-Yes? It is a very emotional thing.

-Our grandparents came from Wales.

The singing of Wales, traditional things from Wales,

-the flag, everything.

-It's part of you?

Yes, because Welsh was my first language.

That was the language my mummy speak...spoke to me.

The first days.

At times like this, I have to pinch myself

and realise that I am 7,000 miles away from Wales,

enjoying some wonderful food and the best company.

40 years ago, I heard a teacher at Llangennech Primary School

tell us about the wonders of Patagonia.

I never thought I'd have the opportunity to come here,

but I'm so glad that I have done.

These people prove something rather special, which is that it

is perfectly natural to be proud, patriotic citizens of Argentina.

It is also perfectly natural to be sustaining a Welsh culture

and way of life.

And I'm so pleased that I've been able to be part of that.

Everywhere you look, the signs and symbols of Welshness sit

comfortably in an Argentine setting. Tokens of a shared heritage.

But, for the first settlers, there was one aspect of their culture

that they were determined not to dilute or compromise.

And this should provide a clue.

This harmonium still plays a pretty decent hymn tune.

Not bad considering it arrived here

a century and a half ago with the Welsh pioneers.

TRANSLATION FROM WELSH:

Communal worship was a priority,

even if it took place in a wooden hut.

Such was the importance to the settlers of their nonconformist religion.

Later, as they mastered their harsh environment,

they built many more chapels.

Some of those chapels are now dwarfed by urban sprawl.

Others look much as they must have done when they were built -

relics of Victorian Wales, transplanted to an alien landscape.

We should never lose sight of the fact that for those early Welsh settlers,

their faith, their nonconformist values were absolutely essential.

That is what sustained them, helped them to get through

all the trials and the difficulties that they suffered.

And these chapels, however small

and however modest they appear, were actually symbols of strength.

This is Bethel Chapel in Trevelin in the Andes.

The first meeting house the Welsh built here was a simple log cabin.

Step inside, you could be in a chapel in rural Wales.

Except that half the service is in Spanish.

HE SPEAKS WELSH

Despite having no Welsh roots, the preacher, Esias Grandis, learnt the language

after being inspired by the story of the Welsh pioneers.

HE SPEAKS WELSH

Their religion bred an independent and radical outlook, up to a point.

Left alone for more than a decade to govern themselves, they created a

society unlike Britain in which all men over the age of 18 had the vote.

But, crucially, the women were excluded.

And it was here in the Chubut Valley that the institutions

that upheld these values were founded.

All run through the medium of Welsh.

And here I am, I can hardly believe it, 40 years after

I first had the dream of coming to Patagonia,

I'm driving towards the Gaiman, which is one of the fortresses of

Welshness in Patagonia.

It's a good time to think, with the sun setting here,

about the ambition and the sacrifice and the vision of those

settlers 150 years ago. It does make you feel very humble.

In 1885, Gaiman became the seat of the first elected council in Patagonia.

Gabriel Restucha has been the town's mayor for the last eight years,

the first Welsh speaker in the post since the 1950s.

TRANSLATION FROM WELSH:

The Welsh also took control of the economy,

forming a co-operative company in 1885

that handled almost all local trade.

And they built a railway linking the Chubut Valley to the coast,

boosting exports and increasing prosperity.

It meant that the arduous journey that cost the life

of the Aberystwyth cobbler Dafydd Williams back in 1865,

was now accomplished in a few hours.

And their cultural confidence was expressed through

the Eisteddfod, a celebration of all things Welsh.

But success did attract some unwelcome attention.

The Argentine government didn't see the Welsh community

as an independent nation in its own right, but as an immigrant part

of the Argentine population based in Chubut.

By the 1890s, Welshmen had to take part in military drills on Sundays,

against their religious principles.

There was a stand-off. The Welsh appealed for British government help

and considered relocating the entire colony to South Africa.

In 1902, nearly 250 settlers did indeed turn their backs on Patagonia

and resettled in Canada.

Relations between the Argentines and the Welsh were damaged and

those left behind sought out a way to declare allegiance to their hosts.

I'm riding on the Old Patagonian Express, on a route which

skirts the border with Chile.

At the turn of the 20th century, the frontier line was bitterly

contested, with Chile claiming lands where the Welsh had settled.

In 1902, the settlers were given a choice -

did they want to be Argentines or Chileans?

And when they gathered here to vote, they opted decisively for Argentina.

No-one should be surprised by the result of the vote

that took place at this school. Just imagine a different outcome.

You'd have the Welsh community in Patagonia split.

One part here in the Andes in Chile

and then the other part, 500 miles to the east in the Chubut Valley, in Argentina.

So, this was a very significant milestone.

The Welsh in Patagonia had declared themselves to be Argentine citizens

and to this day, they are considered to be Argentine heroes

for the choice they made.

The display of allegiance healed the rift between the Welsh

and the Argentines, but the Welsh were not ready to integrate.

40 years earlier, the colony had been founded to prevent

the culture and language being overwhelmed by those of England

and to ensure that it was handed on to the generations to come.

Now, with a new culture threatening to overwhelm them,

the colony remained faithful to that original vision.

They built a school, one that has a fair claim to be the first

Welsh medium secondary school in the world.

Wales would wait another 50 years.

Some of Luned Gonzalez's family members were pupils here in the early days.

The school received pupils from all

Patagonia at the beginning.

From the south and from the west and in Gaiman itself,

the children who were not of Welsh extraction attended the school.

But the Argentine government saw no place for Welsh in education.

State schools fostered patriotism and national unity

under one language - Spanish.

They offered something the Welsh school could not,

official certificates and entry to university.

So, inevitably, they drew pupils away.

How did the policy of the central government in Buenos Aires

affect the status and the teaching of Welsh?

Well, the effect of that was that Welsh was taught at the

Band of Hope and at the chapels

and at the Sunday school, really.

The Sunday school did a tremendous job to keep alive the Welsh language.

In the early years of the 20th century,

the Welsh community was no longer in secure isolation.

The incomers were routinely in contact with people outside

their own community.

One day, Llwyd ap Iwan, the community leader

and son of the founder Michael D Jones, was out on the plain

when he got into an argument with two strangers.

Guns were fired and Jones fell to the ground.

His murder near this spot in 1909 was a very big blow

to the Welsh cause in Patagonia.

He was shot dead by two men, two outlaws,

at the Welsh co-operative store

here at Nant y Pysgod in the foothills of the Andes.

And for many years, there were rumours that he'd been killed by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

They'd been on the run here, but, in fact, they had died the previous year.

The men who shot him were called William Wilson and Robert Evans.

They were former members of the Butch and Sundance gang.

It was a reminder that the Welsh couldn't stay insulated

from the outside world.

They were fast becoming outnumbered by immigrants from Spain, Portugal and Italy,

while the flow of new Welsh immigrants had dried up.

So, it was inevitable that the Welsh lost their political and economic power.

By the 1920s, the co-op, the backbone of Patagonian business,

was in trouble and went bankrupt in the Great Depression.

The nationalisation of the Welsh-owned irrigation company

in the 1940s was another blow.

And the Eisteddfod, for so long the centrepiece of the Welsh

cultural calendar in Patagonia, came to an end in the early 1950s.

The Welsh became second-class citizens.

Children were mocked in school as pan y manteca,

or "bread and butter" Welsh.

For some, it became a badge of shame.

Many families in the Chubut Valley have thoroughly Welsh names,

but they're of a generation that was lost to the language.

TRANSLATION FROM SPANISH:

But his parents decided not to pass on the language.

TRANSLATION FROM SPANISH:

HIS VOICE BREAKS

Michael D Jones had dreamt of creating a safe haven

for Welsh culture.

By the 1950s, the mission the founding fathers had sacrificed

so much to achieve appeared doomed to failure.

The survival of the language was at the very heart of that vision.

By turning their backs on the language,

it seemed a new generation of Welsh Patagonians were also rejecting

the very identity that their ancestors had fought so hard to protect.

Some films made by the BBC in the early 1960s

strike a rather sad note.

Where some of the old leaders lie buried,

the pampas grass comes creeping back.

Today, about 5,000 people of Welsh descent live in Patagonia.

Slowly, they merge with the rest of the Argentinians.

Their language is dying. But the Welsh opened up Patagonia...

We invited some of the people who took part in those films to

view them again half a century on.

HE SPEAKS SPANISH

By the 1960s, most chapel services were in Spanish, even if

the congregation was Welsh.

HE SPEAKS SPANISH

But Monw Evans de Hughes was fighting against the rising tide of all things Spanish.

TRANSLATION FROM WELSH:

Monw's daughter Donna was only three years old

when the documentary was filmed.

TRANSLATION FROM WELSH:

Geraint Edmonds belonged to a generation with

an increasingly blurred sense of identity.

TRANSLATION FROM WELSH:

It seems appropriate then that I should be chatting to Geraint

in Welsh in a typical Argentine saloon bar.

Gracias, senor.

TRANSLATION FROM WELSH:

And that could've been the end of the story, but it isn't quite true.

In 1965, the colony celebrated its centenary, which brought attention,

money and a revived interest in the vision of the founding fathers.

Monuments, like this one near the shore where the pioneers landed,

were built to celebrate their achievement.

And all this awoke an awareness

of the debt owed to the founding fathers

and a new determination to keep their dream alive.

And then a major turning point came at the beginning of the 1980s.

Still without bootlaces, they were marched off and up the muddy track.

The Falklands War brought defeat for the military regime

and the start of a new democratic era.

Argentine nationalism gave way to an emphasis on diversity

and a new interest in learning Welsh.

Thanks to teachers and funding from Wales,

there are some 1,200 learners in Patagonia.

I went to the language centre in Esquel, in the Andes,

to meet some of them.

TRANSLATION FROM WELSH:

What I found striking was that few of the learners

had obvious Welsh links.

I spoke to Clare Vaughan, the Welsh language project coordinator.

What do you think accounts for the surge in interest you're seeing?

There has been a growing awareness of bilingualism as something good.

Back in the Dark Ages, it was felt that if you spoke two languages,

it was a bad thing.

Now, we've moved on from that and there's an acceptance that

it's very good for you to have more than one language,

so that, in general, has helped the cause.

And I also think there's more acceptance of different roots.

People in Argentina are becoming more interested in where they've come from

so that helps.

And we've got people who come from the big cities

looking for a better life here and what they love about

communities like Trevelin, Esquel, is they have a different identity

because of the Welsh connection, and they want to learn the language.

The Welsh identity that Michael D Jones fought to preserve

has been revived in a way that he couldn't possibly have imagined.

FOLK MUSIC

Most of these folk dancers have no Welsh roots at all.

Virginia Steinkamp is an Argentine of German descent.

I met her to try and find out why she was so keen

to embrace all things Welsh.

TRANSLATION FROM WELSH:

Like many others, I have fond memories of the chapel tea,

where people would spend hours sharing stories and gossiping.

It's a tradition that has dwindled in Wales,

but it's still going strong here in Patagonia.

At these regular get-togethers, Spanish is left at the door.

People relax, eat and talk in Welsh.

In Gaiman, if you want to experience a bit of Welshness,

it seems you had better like tea.

There's a Welsh tea house on every corner,

each vying to be more Welsh than the next.

The sign here reads, "The first Welsh tea house in Patagonia."

And one in particular attracts tourists by the busload.

Besides the outsized Welsh teapot, its big selling point

is that Diana, Princess of Wales, stopped here for a cuppa in 1995.

It seems nothing tops that for Welshness.

So they preserved and washed the plate she used, the teapot

her tea was served from and the cup she drank from.

The dregs are stored in a little bottle.

-Muy bien.

-Gracias.

Gracias a usted.

Very good. A nice cup of tea.

This, for you, in many ways,

is the value of Welshness in Patagonia today.

I'm talking about commercial value

and there's a strong royal flavour to that commercial activity.

All of this is held together by this notion of a traditional Welsh tea.

A kind of chapel tea, if you like,

though it's much more sumptuous than the chapel teas I remember as a boy.

And all this is underlined by the fact

that the family running this place admit very happily

that they have little or no connection with Wales or Welshness.

They are just running a very successful business.

And that's the thing - Welshness does sell.

And things that make money are very interesting

to politicians and businesspeople alike.

The Eisteddfod, revived in 1965 as a bilingual event,

is now used to sell the area to tourists.

APPLAUSE

And the provincial government has helped to pay for renovations

to the Welsh chapels

and markets them as historic visitor attractions.

If I had any doubt about the place of Wales in modern Patagonia,

well, that doubt vanished when I ran into a parade

celebrating the foundation of the town of Trevelin.

It's revealing because it shows you how the province sees itself.

The indigenous Indians are represented,

as are the Hispanic peoples, and the Arab immigrants, too.

But pride of place goes to the Welsh contingent

for their crucial role as founders of the settlement

back in the 1880s.

The man applauding is Martin Buzzi,

the Argentine Governor of Chubut Province.

To discuss the Welsh influences that surround him,

I went to see the Governor in the state capital, Rawson.

Just inside the door, dominating the foyer,

was something rather significant -

a mural depicting the Welsh-Argentine cooperation.

It became clear that marking the 150th anniversary

was a political priority.

TRANSLATION FROM SPANISH:

The change in the status of Welsh since the 1960s is quite marked.

In 2006, exactly a century after the first Welsh-language school opened,

the community proudly opened a new bilingual primary school.

One of the teachers there is Catrin Morris.

TRANSLATION FROM WELSH:

We have come a very long way. We have come a very long way.

There is a renaissance of interest in the Welsh, the Welsh language,

the Welsh culture and the Welsh people.

# Gwyliwch eich hun rhag bod mewn perygl

# Mae 'na lawer son bod 'na ddyn o Batagonia... #

It's notable that many of the children here have no Welsh at home

and no Welsh ancestry.

More than that, only the Spanish part of their education is free.

Their parents have to stump up extra for the Welsh half

and it seems they are perfectly happy to do so.

# ..Llawn o swn... #

We offer an education that nobody else here

in Trelew and Chubut offers at the moment.

We offer an education that is based on family values

and, erm, values based on respect.

And we offer a bilingual education,

which is proven to give great advantages.

# Neidr a theigr a dau babwn

# Byw yn y jyngl yn llawn o swn. #

MUSIC: Gwahoddiad

At the cemetery where many of the founding fathers were laid to rest,

you do wonder what they would make of Patagonia today.

Would they recoil at the sight of the colony they built

becoming a tourist commodity in the global marketplace?

Or would they be heartened that the Welsh identity

is being constructed and claimed in new ways?

The founding fathers had set out to build a new Wales,

marked above all by cultural purity.

That vision fell short in many ways,

but it is remarkable that 150 years later, their descendants

are still fighting for the language and culture

that they came to protect.

I remember a funeral in the '60s and the preacher said,

"I hear another nail in the coffin of the Welsh language."

We are speaking of the '60s and we still speak Welsh here.

People from outside come in and see it as something interesting.

As long as we've got young people in the classes,

I'm totally convinced that the thing is going to grow and grow.

TRANSLATION FROM WELSH: