Wales: Is it a country? Say no and face the dragon’s wrath

CARDIFF, Wales – An occasional argument among world travelers is picking apart each other’s country count. A country count is like a body count but more expensive and easier to prove with passport stamps and legal videos. Is Taiwan a country? How about the Faroe Islands? Can you count Bosnia if you visited when it was part of Yugoslavia? 

The biggest debates I’ve had have been about Wales and Scotland. They are part of the United Kingdom which many travelers count as only one. Wales and Scotland are not in the United Nations, and the UN’s list of 193 countries has turned world travel into a scavenger hunt with many travelers checking off country boxes as they bounce off airports.

But the UK’s website lists Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland as well as England as countries. They all have separate legal jurisdictions. Wales and Scotland have their own languages. They have their own deep histories. And they both share a hatred for England that has turned the island of Great Britain into one giant rugby pitch.

Why I count Wales

I count Wales and Scotland merely because FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, lists them separately and in my European world, soccer rules all. FIFA does the same for Northern Ireland. But unlike Scotland and Wales, Northern Ireland was never an independent country and its people are fiercely loyal to either Ireland or the UK, depending on if they’re Catholic or Protestant.

Confusing? Yes. Inconsistent? No doubt. I don’t care. I only started counting countries when people kept asking. People have their lists; I have mine. (If you care and I don’t, I’ve been to 113 countries.)

But where I did not find a debate about Wales was in … well, Wales. I visited the Welsh capital of Cardiff last week and could see Wales’ keen sense of nationalism in my five-minute walk from my hotel to High Street, one of the city’s many pedestrian streets lined with pubs.

Wales’ flag, unforgettable with a fierce red dragon emblazoned on a white and green background, was everywhere. In four days I saw more dragons than Harry Potter. 

Also, nearly everything in Cardiff is bilingual in English and Welsh. Ticket offices. Road signs. Even building names. The Welsh language has roots going back to 600 B.C. and the ancient Celts. Welsh is soft, musical and easy on the ears. If you watched Lord of the Rings, J.R. Tolkien based the Elvish language on Welsh linguistics.

Wales’ S4C is even a Welsh-language TV station. Just don’t try understanding it. Your mind will snap.

One of my hangouts became the Temple Bar. It’s only two years old but seems older, like it opened when they served mead in goblets and called waitresses “scullery wenches.” 

It’s not run down. It just has all the trappings of an old, homey, neighborhood bar. Dark wood. Cushy booths. One sign reads “What’s the craic?” It’s an old term loosely meaning “gossip.”

In the Temple Bar, I heard a band of 13 musicians, many from Cardiff’s Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. As they played riveting Welsh tunes on the fiddles and guitars, I shared a few pints with Richard Hall. Tall and clean shaven with a red flannel shirt, the 55-year-old Hall was a career UK military officer who served two years in Northern Ireland during the violent Troubles period. He now works in cyber security.

An expert on British history, he knows a little about nationalism. I told him I always considered Wales a country and asked, Why am I right?

“We’re our own people,” he said. “We always have been. We are our own nation. We have our own language, and we have our own history, older than England’s.”

It’s true. The Celts brought their language to this southern part of the island in 600 B.C. The Romans controlled Great Britain from 60-410 A.D. and kingdoms began emerging in Wales. When the Saxons overran England in the 5th century, the Celts held strong to Wales, cementing the Welsh ID for the next 1,600 years.

“Wales has never been conquered,” Hall said. “Not even the Romans did it. Julius Caesar landed his first army here … There’s an excerpt from the chronicles of Julius Caesar. He landed in South Wales first. He wrote we were the most vicious people he’d ever met. He instantly withdrew his troops.”

I heard similar responses all week. At the Admiral Bar between Cardiff’s gleaming modern soccer and rugby stadiums, I met Gavin Rickard, 49, and Hugh Davies, 46, both of whom, like me, had just watched the local soccer club, relegation-challenged Cardiff City FC, lose another game in a season to forget.

Rickard’s son goes to one of the many Welsh-speaking schools that have popped up around the country. Eighteen percent of Wales’ 3.3 million people speak Welsh. English remains the first language in Cardiff but Davies comes from a small town in West Wales where the Welsh language fills the streets.

I asked if Wales is a country.

“Absolutely, we’re our own country,” Rickard said. “Wales is like Catalonia.”

“But Catalonia isn’t a country,” I said.

“But it should be,” he answered.

Unlike Scotland, Wales never had an independence movement.

“That’s not the thing, really,” Rickard said. “We’re not about voting. It’s about an ideal, a cultural ideal. You go to rugby, England-Wales. That is when you should be here when you want to know what it’s about.”

Which brings us back to Hall’s comment that Wales has never been conquered. That’s not true, really. They’ve been conquered a lot, especially lately. Wales’ once proud rugby team, which has won Europe’s prestigious annual Six Nations tournament 28 times and as recently as 2021, overall around the world has lost 16 games in a row. That includes twice to Italy, the historic paddling boy of European rugby.

England vs. Wales

England visits Wales in the Six Nations finale Saturday. Wales’ hatred for all things English stems from a series of actions that read like something out of Crime and Punishment: 

• 13th century: Wales finds a strong leader in Llywelyn ap Gruffydd (Welsh aren’t big believers in vowels). But Edward I builds a ring of castles to stop any future Welsh rebellions.
• 16th century: King Henry VIII introduces the Tudor Acts of Union and grants England and Wales equal rights but makes English the official language. The Welsh language is strictly forbidden.
• 1965: The UK has a reservoir built in the North Wales village of Capel Celyn to provide drinking water for Liverpool 60 miles away. The town is flooded, forcing 75 villagers from their homes and leaving 12 farms, the school and post office under water.
• 1984: Prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government forces the closure of 20 coal mines in Wales, leading to the end of a lengthy miners strike. Once the world’s leading coal exporter, Wales sees its coal industry slowly collapse, the last closing in 2008. Thatcher is still considered, in the eyes of the Welsh, a walking bubonic plague.
• 2011: In a referendum by the Welsh Assembly asking if Wales should have the ability to make laws without the UK Parliament’s approval, 64 percent vote yes.

However, Wales is still betrothed to policies made in London. It’s a relationship that makes that dragon breathe fire.

“Our national health service – which, by the way, was invented by a Welshman – they just had a 25 percent cut in spending by England,” Hall said. “So Welsh hospitals are overrun, understaffed, under equipped. The same with investment in public services.

“It’s so fucking corrupt. So if you ask a Welsh person what the problem with Wales is, it’s the fucking government.”

Capital stroll

I spent one day walking around Cardiff, a city of 372,000 people and one of the most walkable cities on a continent full of them. I was lucky. Weather was in the 40s with bright sunshine. Locals see dragons parasailing more than the sun. 

Cardiff gets more rain than any city in Great Britain. It rains here 153 days a year. It doesn’t rain heavily. It gets only 46 inches annually. My home in Rome gets 37. But it rains in Cardiff at least every other day. Picnics are not advisable.

One aspect I love about Europe is pedestrian streets. They crisscross central Cardiff. Without cars, people walk down the middle of the road lined with pubs and shops and cafes with their outdoor tables often filled even in weather in the 40s.

Cardiff is also spotless. Garbage bins are everywhere. It has one of the most beautiful administrative quarters in all of the UK. I walked past the pretty Gorsedd Gardens with the huge statue of David Lloyd George, the only Welshman to become prime minister (1916-1922). Across the street are the neoclassical Cardiff Crown Court, City Hall and National Museum, all gleaming with stone from the nearby island of Portland.

I walked through Cardiff University’s Gothic main hall where students from all over Britain come to one of the world’s top 50 ranked communications schools. I crossed a short bridge reading “SLOW” in English and “ARAF” in Welsh into the Alexandra Gardens. It’s five acres of grass, trees and bike paths with a babbling brook running along one edge.

They also sport war memorials of Welsh volunteers who fought against fascism during the Spanish Civil War and for the Welsh who died in World War II. 

Cardiff Castle

In between the barren trees I could see the pointy, 40-meter (132-foot) high tower of the Cardiff Castle sticking a needle hauntingly into the sky. The castle is a must see for anyone to know the importance Wales played in the world during the 19th to 21st century.

Commissioned by William the Conqueror, it was first built in wood in 1081 then in stone in 1135. It became home to the Butes, a family of Scots who set up shop in Cardiff and transformed the city from a simple fishing village in the 18th century to the world’s leading exporter of coal.

From 1766-1947, the Butes lived part time in the castle and fueled Britain’s wars all over the world. At its peak in 1913, Wales exported 10.3 million tons of coal, earning the Butes, by today’s standards, about 40 million pounds (€47.5 million) a year.

They not only employed about half of the Welsh population, they also spent a lot on their castle. I took a tour of the inside and everything is in gold leaf. They had their own smoking room, with little drawers to hold cigars.

John II Marquis of Bute was an old-fashioned romantic. He adored his wife and her picture is everywhere. So are motifs of animals, which he also loved. Emblazoned on a wall is “Love conquers all things” in Latin, one of 21 languages Bute allegedly could speak.

The upstairs is full of huge ornate drawing rooms and banquet halls with iron chandeliers hanging over them all. Pres. Obama attended a NATO summit meeting here in 2014. The third floor has a roof garden with bright blue, sunny decorations to make it look a little like Pompeii,

The Butes abandoned the castle in 1947 and gave it to the city which now can rent you a banquet room for a cool 750 pounds (€890) an hour.

A nightcap

That night I went to the Blue Bell, Cardiff’s second-oldest pub established in 1813. They serve a terrific cawl, a traditional hearty Welsh soup made of lamb, bacon, cabbage and potatoes. Everyone in these pubs is so friendly. Unlike the English, the Welsh are happy drunks, not angry drunks.

Even Amy, the waitress, was bubbly and inquisitive.

“If I saw you down the street, I’d come over and ask where you’re from,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because you’re a human being!”

I met another country Welshman. Daniel Lewis, 39, grew up in the West Wales town of Aberystwyth and we chatted about life in today’s Wales and Welsh pride.

“When visiting Wales, it’s like visiting your grandmother,” he said. “Everyone will look after you. You get that little feeling. I get that in Cardiff all the time.”

I asked him about Wales’ relationship with England. Who took a long draw from his beer, contemplating his words.

“We are the dragon of Wales,” he said. “And the dragon is still alive.”

If you are thinking of going …

How to get there: One problem with Cardiff tourism is it’s isolated. I flew 2 ½ hours from Rome to London’s Stansted Airport. I took a train to Liverpool Street Station, a subway to Paddington Street Station then a train two hours to Cardiff. From Rome to my Cardiff hotel took nine hours. I can fly to New York in 10. My train from Stansted to Cardiff was 59.60 pounds (€70).

Where to stay: Leonardo Hotel, 1 Park Pl., 44-161-774-2983, https://www.leonardo-hotels.com/cardiff/leonardo-hotel-cardiff, cardiff@leonardohotels.com. Four-star hotel in the middle of the city center five minutes from Cardiff Castle. Has big rooms and very helpful staff. I paid €271 for three nights, not including breakfast.

Where to eat: Blue Bell, 33 High St., 44-29-2151-0043, https://www.bluebellcardiff.co.uk, info@fluebellcardiff.co.uk, 11 a.m.-midnight Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-2 a.m. Friday, 10 a.m.-2 a.m. Saturday, 10 a.m.-midnight Sunday. Excellent gastro pub food with traditional Welsh dishes such as lamb cawl for 10.95 pounds (€13). Adventurous? Try faggots, Welsh pork with mashed potatoes, peas and gravy. As one local told me, “It shouldn’t be good, but it is.”

When to go: It rains all year round in Cardiff but it’s particularly harsh in January when it averages 20 days. The summer’s average high is 71 but can reach 80. My four days in March were in the 40s and 50s and, luckily, stone dry.

For more information: Tourist office, Cardiff Castle, 44-029-2087-2167, www.visitcardiff.com, Ieuan.bater@cardiff.gov.uk, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. March-October, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. November-February.