Cymru or Wales?

Whether Plaid Cymru likes it or not, the fact is that history has made Wales a culturally-diverse nation with at least 3 distinct areas originally delineated by Denis Balsom in 1979 in his "Three-Wales Model". The fact that led him to construct this model is that the willingness to be identified as "British" is not dependent on linguistic factors only, but is strongly linked to the geographical territory inhabited by a given group. Thus, we could speak about a British Wales, roughly taking up the wide border country, including the southern coast, plus the north-eastern coast; a Welsh-Wales taking up the central and southern areas; and finally, what is commonly referred as "Y Fro Gymraeg", or Welsh-speaking area, represented by the north-western and west-central areas.

The point that needs to be made is that Wales, at least nowadays, is a far more complex reality than a well-preserved enclave Welsh-speaking Celtic stock. The centuries of English dominations, complex migratory patterns and now the globalization era cannot be deleted at a stroke or taken as a perfect excuse for the imposition of a given cultural pseudo-tradition on the whole of Wales. This is, however, what seems to be taking place in Wales nowadays. In a way, the situation is understandable after centuries of what could be referred to as cultural oppression on the part of the English, which arguably continues nowadays, since the British media seem to have become the repository of the traditionally English ignorance of Welsh singularity. But this does not justify that the inhabitants of Y Fro Gymraeg should look down on the Anglo-Welsh of the Valleys as not truly Welsh.

The situation is a rather complex one, with 80% of the population ( the non-Welsh speakers ) finding it increasingly difficult to prove Welshness and feeling largely ignored by the national Welsh-speaking S4C TV Channel. Watching S4C is a strange experience because the Welsh programmes are constantly interrupted by English advertisements. A 20% Welsh minority can also feel like exiles in a land which is becoming overwhelmingly Anglicised.

In Wales a revitalized literary culture in both languages is currently destabilizing the old binary order. Movement outside one´s own language group is often a way of reinventing one´s literary identity. Many works of contemporary novelists and dramatists show that awareness of cultural tradition need not necessarily be essentialist or conservative.

Historians tend, on the whole, to pay more attention to Britishness, perhaps because they are aware of the history of the term itself, which was originally and surprisingly the property of the Welsh. "We Welsh look like being the Last of the British. There is some logic in this. We were, after all, the First."

The invisibility of Wales as a separate cultural and political entity is a constant source of annoyance to the Welsh. One thing which tends to diminish the notion of Wales as a separate entity is the practice of combining England and Wales together as a single unit. Even the television weather reports speak of meteorological conditions in "England and Wales", while virtually all government statistics also cover the same strange territory.

There is no doubt that English culture has been enormously influenced by Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Welsh studies must turn its attention to itself initially and not to the ways it has infiltrated neighbouring cultures.