It will be further boosted next month when the marvellous slate, steel and glass Millennium Centre cultural complex at Cardiff Bay opens in two gala concerts under the creative leadership of Terfel.
Gone are the memories of the shabby way Zaha Hadid's Cardiff opera house plans were dismissed; now something called Cool Cymru is thriving as never before. This growing mood of national pride has occasionally faltered. The establishment of the Welsh Assembly in , the first political assembly since Owain Glyndwr disappeared in , followed a referendum in which the majority in favour of devolution was only 7, Political debate in the chamber was often derided as inane and circumlocutious.
Perhaps members were falling to that supposedly common Welsh ailment, Kinnockian windbaggery. These simple facts show the assembly has been worthwhile. I don't think you'd find any people in Wales now who would want the assembly to be scrapped.
Rather, I think a lot of people want our powers to be extended. They want us to take charge of all areas of education, of the police and ambulance services and not just the fire brigade. This week, members started to debate the Richard Commission report on whether the Welsh assembly should have more legislative powers and thus become akin to the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh.
The sensibilities of Westminster turkeys notwithstanding, perhaps now is the time for Wales to self-confidently take charge of its own destiny and wield real political power for the first time in years. After all, the giddy pomp of the Cardiff Bay redevelopment will come to a climax next year when Richard Rogers' new assembly building opens.
But Cool Cymru was never even principally about devolution. It had a linguistic tenor unimagined in the philosophy of its big-headed big brother, Cool Britannia. Enthusiasm for learning Welsh grew during the rest of the decade. Welsh-medium schools opened and thrived. Of course, during those two decades the extraction of black gold from the South Wales valleys ended, to be replaced by the ingestion of drugs as well as soaring unemployment, but let's not spoil the story.
The nurturing of the Welsh language, when the other Celtic tongues that were once widely spoken across the British Isles survive hardly at all, is a great source of Welsh pride.
But I made it my business to learn - to be part of the community. Me and my husband put our children in the Welsh-medium school that was bolted on to the English school in our village. It was a great decision. What is the point in learning Welsh?
I also have a great literary tradition you can't really grasp, as well as Shakespeare. It gives me an access to the tradition of my own ancestors, too. But the Welsh language is a tender flower. Large numbers of non-Welsh speakers have been moving to traditional centres of the language, causing resentment as they inflate property prices and, unlike Ryder, do not become involved in local traditions.
At the same time, the main Welsh towns and cities are near England, that great sucking vortex of Anglo-American globalised values and so they are often ill-inclined to learn the language of their ancestors. The Welsh-language pressure group Cymuned announced earlier this week that it is preparing a campaign of civil disobedience to defend Welsh-speaking communities.
Last weekend, its members blocked the A44 into Aberystwyth to highlight the issue of students who stay in town after graduation but do not try to learn Welsh. Not exactly the same as the Sons of Glendower burning holiday homes, but there is clearly still much resentment of English interlopers.
The threat to Welsh isn't quite so brutal as it was in the 19th century, when speaking Welsh was regarded as offensive by Anglocentric educators. If Eifion then said something to me in Welsh, the board would be hung around his neck. Then if Elaine said something in Welsh to me at playtime, it would be hung around her neck.
At the end of the day, the one with the Welsh Not would have their hand spanked. I did not know that. Clearly it was time to take an Englishman's remedial tour of Wales.
I decided on a coast-to-coast journey from Cardiff Bay in the south to Llandudno in the north. Thanks to Dr Beeching, s scourge of the railways, there are no train services from the Welsh capital to North Wales that do not involve crossing back in to England.
There used to be a railway from Carmarthen to Aberystwyth that continued north, but no longer. And there are no internal flights. So I decided to drive, and in doing so found a country that is geographically divided and thus culturally very diverse. When the drinkers at Y Mochyn Du learned what I was planning, they suggested a consciousness-raising itinerary.
I followed it as closely as possible, though I did get hopelessly lost between Builth Wells and Tregaron and found myself rising and falling along single-tracked roads fringed by gloriously dying golden bracken and confronted by unexpectedly grand, sunny mountain vistas that opened up between October showers. I think here I found what the Welsh writer Jan Morris this week called "a love land, impervious to the vulgarities of map-makers and politicians".
I was for a while delightfully lost. But I did find Cilmeri, a suggested stop on the itinerary, where there is a monument to Llewellyn ap Gruffydd, killed by an English soldier in Huw describes this Welsh hero as "the last true Prince of Wales". Unlike, presumably, our own proper Charlie. And I did visit Trawsfynydd, the home town of the 20th-century Welsh poet Hedd Wynn, another national hero.
Most piquantly, I visited Llyn Celyn dam near Bala. It was here that, in , the village of Capel Celyn was deemed expendable in order to meet England's purportedly greater needs.
It was drowned by waters rising behind the dam on the river Tryweryn to secure water supplies to Liverpool. I sat in the small chapel of remembrance and thought about my Welsh ancestors, who may well feel betrayed that their descendants left Wales for the richer pickings of the West Midlands, flooding other Welsh valleys to create reservoirs to provide the English with water.
If I was Welsh, I'd be resentful. I went on to Llandudno, which Huw had said was "the shame of Wales". Winning songs in the first 8 contests always seem to have a degree of gentleness. Bran's Angel Ble Wyt Ti increased the tempo slightly in but this was short lived as gentle songs returned to glory for several years, with perhaps a couple of exceptions such as Geraint Griffiths's powerful ballad Y Cwm from Twll Triongl in seemed to be the first upbeat winner of the contest.
Another jaunty hit was Gwlad y Rasta Gwyn by Sobin a'r Smaeliad the following year the lead singer, Bryn Fon would win the contest by himself in This signalled the beginning of a more varied choice of winner.
One year, a pop-based number like 's Harbwr Diogel by Elin Fflur for whom, it proved to be the catalyst for a successful career would be chosen and the next year, a soppy duet such as Oes Lle i Mi would take the honours.
For quite a while, the contest was held at Afan Lido Leisure Centre in Port Talbot which was latterly burnt down and deemed beyond repair. In , the shebang moved to the slightly more interesting Venue Cymru arena the old North Wales Theatre in Llandudno. It moved again for the contest to the Pontrhydfendigaid Pavilion in Ceredigion, making its Cardiff debut in at the Coal Exchange, and the Anglesea Pavilion in David's Day.
It was held the day after instead. The radio coverage did not return in mainly because of Radio Cymru's sacrosanct Sunday night schedule of listeners' requests and Y Talwrn. In , there were special preview programmes where viewers were shown all the entrants from a category one per programme.
However by , the previews were relegated into the Planed Plant childrens' strand and linked by PP's continuity team. As part of a recent trend at S4C, production of Can i Gymru has been tendered out on two-year contracts think of it as like an ITV franchise round without all the harumph about highest bidders and quality thresholds.
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