The Regional Welsh Museum is the best place to understand how and why a group of Welsh settlers established themselves in this remote Patagonian valley in 1865. The exhibits include photographs of the original colonists, documents in Welsh and Spanish, tools and household objects brought from Wales, and materials documenting the early struggle to survive in a landscape entirely unlike anything the settlers had known.
The story is both inspiring and melancholy: the settlers came fleeing anglicisation, seeking a place where Welsh could be spoken as a living language. They found survival difficult and had to negotiate carefully with the Argentine government and the indigenous Tehuelche people. The museum captures both the idealism of the project and its human cost.
story: "The Welsh colonists of Patagonia negotiated directly with the Argentine government in 1865, receiving a grant of land and the right to maintain their own language and customs — essentially a separate cultural enclave within Argentina. The colony was the only serious attempt by any nation to establish a Welsh-speaking society outside Wales itself."