Wales
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Wales is one of the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom. When the Angles and Saxons settled in and took over the areas that became England and southern Scotland, they did not settle in Wales, which is to the west of the middle part of England. King Offa, ruler of Mercia (now "the Midlands"), built a long dyke separating the mountains of Wales from the lower land which he ruled. Traces of this dyke (ditch) can still be seen now. After the Norman conquest of England, the Normans sailed to the extreme south-western part of Wales, which was less mountainous, captured that area and built castles there. They also brought English people to settle there. Over the next few hundred years, various Norman or "English" kings tried to conquer other parts of Wales, relying mostly on building huge fortifications at strategic points.
Although Wales gradually came under the English crown, most parts of Wales still spoke the Welsh language until quite recently. At the present time, perhaps 30% of the population can speak Welsh, though many do not habitually do so. The language survives largely in the western parts of Wales, in small towns and in the countryside. Because everyone can also speak English, there has not been a great emphasis on translating Bahá'í literature into Welsh. At the present time (2020), there only exist two items which are available in printed form: the translation of The Hidden Words, and a Welsh leaflet which is the translation of the Warwick publication, "The Bahá'í Faith - What Is It?"
Caerdydd, or in English, Cardiff, is the capital of Wales. The cluster for that part of Wales ("South Wales" - effectively the south-eastern part) has a Programme of Growth, as does the cluster for North Wales. The two other clusters, Mid-Wales and South-West Wales, are largely rural, and have few Bahá'ís. One of the logistical problems which Wales has is that it has historically been treated as an "add-on" to England, and both roads and railways tend to connect parts of Wales to cities in England, and not to each other. This gives severe problems to the Bahá'í Council for Wales, as it takes many hours for members to drive through the mountains just to have meetings. There are no direct roads or railways which go north-south.
The population of the country is just over 3,000,000. Much of the land is mountainous, and the population density is very low. The two main areas of population are in the valleys and coastal towns of the south-east, and the coast in the north-east.
The first Bahá'í in Wales was Mrs Rose Jones, in about 1940. At the end of the Second World War, the National Spiritual Assembly of the British Isles was given a Six Year Plan by the Guardian of the Faith, which included establishing at least one Local Spiritual Assembly in each of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Cardiff was the first Local Spiritual Assembly in Wales, but other Assemblies were later established both elsewhere in South Wales and along the northern coast.
