Luis Beltrán

Luis Beltrán is in the Avellaneda department, in the Middle Valley of the Negro River, on the Isla Grande de Choele Choel. It has 8,087 residents (2022 census). It is reached by provincial route 7, which joins National Route 250 and then Route 22.

Climate

Mild and dry: an annual mean of about 15 °C and around 250 mm of rain a year.

History

Around 1903 the Welshman Edward Owen was running the irrigation canal works around Choele Choel. He had come at the request of the territory’s governor, José Eugenio Tello, and some seventy men with their families came with him from the Welsh colony in the Chubut valley. Owen is regarded as the founder of Río Negro’s Welsh colony, and the village was first called “Villa Galense” and then “Tir Pentre”, Welsh for “village land”. A decree of 14 February 1911 gave it its current name, honouring Fray Luis Beltrán, the friar and lieutenant colonel of the Army of the Andes.

Distances: Middle Valley of the Negro River · Choele Choel Island