02-05-2025
I visited Patagonia… where Welsh culture is alive and well
It was a Sunday evening in Moriah Chapel, and the congregation were belting out the words to the famous hymn, Calon Lân. Once their song was sung, a hush settled and the minister began to share his thoughts – in Welsh – on a passage from the Book of Jeremiah. At the same time, a few of the locals shuffled into the vestry to start making tea for the post-service refreshments.
One might easily mistake this setting for a chapel in Caerphilly or Ceredigion. However, a sign above the doors in Spanish saying salida (exit) suggests otherwise. That's because this isn't Wales, but Argentina. To be precise, the town of Trelew in Chubut province, which occupies a chunk of northern Patagonia.
In these parts, this year marks the 160th anniversary of the arrival of the Mimosa, a converted tea-clipper carrying 150 Welsh men, women and children. They had set sail intent on starting a new life in the new world, and on founding what they called 'a little Wales beyond Wales '.
They felt that national identity was being eroded back home, due to fast-growing English interest in Welsh coal mines.
'These people travelled half way around the globe, without a clue what awaited them, and in many ways it was their sense of patriotism that drove them on through the dark times,' says Milton Rhys, an Argentinian citizen whose great-grandfather (from Port Talbot) was one of the early settlers.
I met and chatted to him after the service at Moriah, one of the biggest of this province's 30-plus Welsh chapels. The dark times to which Rhys refers came in the years immediately after the Mimosa crossed the Atlantic and landed at Puerto Madryn on 28 July 1865.
Now a small city, back then Puerto Madryn was just a bay, and visitors to it today barely believe their eyes when they see the grotto-like openings in the cliffs, where the immigrants spent their first nights. Built above those cliffs and offering a fine view of the sea, the Museum of Disembarkation tells the story of the Welsh arrival. It is modestly sized, but still contains several objects of interest, such as a doll and a bassinet made by women on board the Mimosa for the first Welsh child to be born in Patagonia.
The settlers soon moved westwards – ie. inland. The region was as empty as they had expected. However, it boasted none of the lush green terrain one associates with Wales. This was a hard and dry place of wide-open expanses, and one which Argentina's government, based 1,000 miles north in Buenos Aires, had little interest in – a view still held in the following century when the writer, Jorge Luis Borges, asserted 'there is nothing in Patagonia'.
The local area's only inhabitants were the indigenous Tehuelche, nomadic people whose lessons in hunting beasts such as the guanaco (a type of llama) proved invaluable. Eventually, the Welsh settled in the lower valley of the River Chubut: a semi-hospitable zone, around 50 miles long, where they set up farms.
The key moment came, though, when one of the settlers – reportedly a woman called Rachel Jenkins – had the idea of irrigating the valley through a system of canals using waters from the river. 'From then on, things really took off,' Rhys told me, with a glint in his eye.
Wheat, in particular, began to be grown successfully, and was exported far and wide. Waves of further Welsh settlers duly arrived, and towns such as Trelew, Gaiman and Dolavon were founded.
It's here that the Welsh influence is most keenly felt today: each town full of bilingual road signs and flags with red dragons on. And that's not to mention the tea houses, of which Gaiman alone has five. I tried Ty Gwyn, just off the town square.
After admiring the Welsh dressers, containing items ranging from rugby balls to toy sheep, I politely asked for a menu – only to be ignored by the waitress. She soon placed on my table her whole trolley's worth of homemade cakes, tarts, sponges and breads, including the biggest slice of bara brith (traditional Welsh tea bread) I've ever seen. 'No menu here,' she said, pouring tea into my cup from a bulbous pot covered with a knitted cosy.
Each customer gets served all the above for a flat fee of around £20. Interestingly, the waitress spoke to me in English: a sign of the rise in international tourism in Chubut province in recent years, owing chiefly to its coastal wildlife. Spotting southern right whales is especially popular.
By the end of the 19 th century, the Welsh had built a railway linking the towns of the lower Chubut valley with Puerto Madryn (newly established as a port). The railway is nowadays defunct, but the erstwhile station in Gaiman serves as the Regional Historical Museum. One can browse old copies of local Welsh-language newspapers and look at photographs of early settlers – the likes of Benjamin Brunt, who won the Best Wheat prize at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.
The settlers also went on to occupy a part of Chubut hundreds of miles west, by the Andes. However, Welsh immigration fell away after the outbreak of the First World War, and the 20 th century saw an influx of Argentinian, Spanish and Italian people.
Today, only around 10 per cent of Chubut province's 600,000 population have Welsh origins. Yet the Celtic influence remains strong, in part thanks to an initiative launched by the Welsh government in 1997 (and administered by the British Council) which funds the teaching of Welsh at schools and adult learning centres across the province.
As for Rhys, he's a retired choirmaster who volunteers at Asociación San David, a centre in Trelew aimed at promoting all things Welsh. Every October, it hosts an eisteddfod.
'You won't see any people walking down the street with leeks,' he said. 'But here, Welsh culture here is still very much alive.'
Essentials
Alastair was a guest of Journey Latin America (020 3553 9647), which offers an 11-day holiday to Argentina combining Buenos Aires with Gaiman and Puerto Madryn, from £5,574 per person, including international flights, transfers, excursions and good-quality hotels on a B&B basis.
Numerous airlines operate indirect flights between London and Buenos Aires. Aerolineas Argentinas flies 28 times a week between Buenos Aires and Trelew – each flight takes two hours.
Posada Los Mimbres, a converted farmhouse just outside Gaiman, offers a comfortable and well-located base from which to explore the surrounding area. Doubles from £68 per night.
