Mark Drakeford, Chief Minister for Wales
The Labor politician is committed to developing an understanding with the Basque Government that gives “tangible benefits”
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Did you know the historical episode of the arrival of Basque children during the Civil War?
-Not with the details that I have known recently, but growing up in Wales I had an understanding of the Civil War. Many Welshmen battled with the International Brigades. The trade union movement, and in particular the miners’ union, strongly supported the legitimate Government of Spain. Someone, like me, interested in the history of the labor movement, was aware of Wales’s relationship with the Civil War. I grew up in the west, in Camarthen, which is very close to Brechfa, where one of the three groups of Basque children was housed.
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He wore a tie a few days ago in the Cardiff Parliament that a Jewish refugee gave him in the Second World War.
– It is inevitable that in the current circumstances we think about the impact of the war in Ukraine with the perspective of what happened 85 years ago. Fifteen days ago I visited one of the welcome centers for Ukrainian families. They are putting their situation in order and thinking about their future. I asked some children what it was like to live in Wales and one 7-year-old pointed to the sky and said, ‘No missiles’. How to imagine that at the age of seven he has had to live such an experience. Those who came in 1937 would have direct experience of the bombing of Basque communities, which occurred shortly before they had to leave.
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Is Wales a country noted for hosting refugees?
– I don’t want to make big claims about Wales being a different place than others. There is a long tradition of offering sanctuary to people from other parts of the world. In recent times, in addition to Ukrainians, we have welcomed people from Syria and Afghanistan. My personal experience is that if you live in a community with many people from other countries, you accept it as an everyday thing. I live in an area of Cardiff that is the most multicultural in Wales, and it is very quiet. The places where there are tensions are usually the ones with the fewest people from outside. I think you have to understand it as an anxiety about the unknown. If you see it every day you understand that it is a strength. That will be as true in Wales as anywhere else.
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Is the Memorandum of Understanding with the Basque Government symbolic or material?
– I think there are real benefits. I have spoken with two old friends from the Basque Government who have come to the commemoration and we agree that we are not interested in simply signing papers. We want them to translate into tangible benefits. Our first relationship with the Basque Government was about language policy. The Welsh language is spoken by a percentage similar to the population that speaks Basque. We were able to explain our experience. We have had exchanges on that agenda for the last 50 years. And we have had very close ties with Mondragón, because of the cooperatives. We created a Center for Cooperatives in Wales, following a visit by the trade union association to Mondragón some 40 years ago. Those links are important to us. More recently, after the creation of Welsh autonomy, we have identified four or five regions of the European Union with which, for specific reasons, we want to have close relations, and the Basque Country is one of them. It reflects our history but also our contemporary interest in marine energy, sport and culture, in what we can learn from each other about health policy. We are very committed, and I think the Basque Government is too, to develop the personal meetings that we have missed so much in the last two and a half years.
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