Welsh First Minister Eluned Morgan recalls plane crash with family in Spain

Welsh First Minister Eluned Morgan has spoken about the moment she and her family survived a plane crash in Spain as a child.

A small aircraft carrying an 11-year-old Morgan, her relatives and a family friend crashed at a golf course near Bilbao in 1978 after avoiding smashing into a cliff, with the occupants having to drag themselves out of the burning wreckage.

“The undercarriage was ripped out, the wings were on fire and, thankfully, the whole family escaped – certainly not unscathed, but it was clearly the biggest shock of our lives,” she said.

Morgan is due to return to the area of the crash while in Spain seeking to boost trade with the Basque Country and Catalonia.

Morgan said the crash happened on her first trip abroad after her family of six, including her local councillor father, her mother and three brothers, were offered a free holiday to northern Spain – as well as a separate offer for a pilot to fly them there and back in a private plane.

On the return flight the Cessna aircraft was to refuel at Bilbao, where there was a “lot of industrial fog and mist laying low,” she said, adding she remembered “thinking something was wrong”.

“Because the pilot couldn’t see the landing strip, he approached from the sea,” Morgan recalled, before he “realised there was a cliff ahead of him”.

“He pulled up very quickly, the engine stalled and we crashed onto a golf course.”

The plane’s undercarriage was ripped out and its wings were on fire, while everyone on the plane lost consciousness “for a few seconds”, Morgan said.

“We managed to open the door and scramble out, but we had no idea what was going on.

“We had no idea if the plane was going to blow up.

“We were absolutely lost, and obviously very concerned for my mother, who was bleeding from her head, and for the pilot, and the other woman [family friend] who was with us.”

Morgan said all of the adults apart from her father broke ribs “from the impact of the seat belts holding them in”.

“Except for my youngest brother, who was four at the time,” she added. “[He] was sitting on my dad’s knee, and instead of my dad’s ribs cracking, it cracked my brother’s spine.”

Her parents chose to stay in hospital with her younger brother in Spain before he could be stretchered back to the UK – while Morgan returned home with her other two brothers, with the three having “escaped relatively unscathed”.

“And that was, obviously, a terrifying experience – coming back to Wales without parents, after quite a traumatic event,” she said.

But the first minister said the accident came at an age where she was “just too young for it to have had that profound impact”.

Morgan said she took her parents back to the golf course a “number of years later” to thank people there who were “really kind and generous to us” after the crash.

Speaking ahead of her return to the area, she said: “It’s lovely to go back now, to say thank you to them for the support that they gave us, and, obviously, we’ll give thanks every day for the fact that we survived what could have been a very, very tragic situation.”

Morgan signed a new agreement with Catalonian President Salvador Illa in Barcelona on Wednesday which commits to working together on matters including technology, renewable energy, trade, investment, language and culture.

On Thursday she will sign one with Basque Country President Imanol Pradales.