Don't mention the war

Since arriving in Argentina, I've met quite a few locals and we've talked about everything from Lady Diana and the Beatles to Barack Obama and the imminent collapse of western civilisation. But the one thing none of them have ever brought up, and neither have I, is the Falklands War.

In Buenos Aires it was quite easy to forget it had ever happened as there are very few reminders in the city. But as you travel south more and more memorials appear, particularly in Rio Gallegos, Rio Grande and in Ushuaia, as it was from this part of Argentina that a lot of their naval and aerial operations were launched.

This is the Air Force memorial in Rio Gallegos - I was shocked at how many names they had on the plaque, I had no idea they'd lost so many pilots.

And this is a Belgrano memorial in Rio Gallegos as well.

The biggest memorial I've seen so far is in Ushuaia though. Every city has a Aveninda Malvinas or Islas Malvinas square, but none have such an impressive memorial as the one here.

I hadn't really taken it in, but it is obviously still a very big issue here. The plaque below was placed by the Argentinian president when he visited Ushuaia last year.

There's not only a lot of memorials, but alot of car stickers, stickers in shop windows and road signs all proclaiming that "Las Malivnas son Argentinos". Even there maps mark the islands as being Argentinian.

I did eventually have one conversation about the subject with a junior naval officer in a bar in Ushuaia and he was willing to talk to me about it.

He said that Argentina had been foolish to start the war and that Galtieri had never expected the British to respond. When I said that we had very nearly lost the war, he wasn't convinced and said it was stupid of the Argentinian conscripts to try and fight the professional British forces.

However, he seemed convinced that Britain would have used nuclear weapons against Argentina if the war had continued. I tried to say that I was pretty confident that the British government would never have done that, even if faced with defeat in the war. That they would rather hand the islands over than fire a nuclear missile at Buenos Aires. But he said the English never surrender, that we'd never surrendered to Napoleon, never surrendered to Hitler so it was unlikely we were going to surrender Las Malvinas to Argentina. He actually made me feel quite proud to be English, even if his nuclear threat comment threw me a bit.

He did say to me though at the end of the conversation. "Do not talk about this with other people. Some are not as realistic as me."

Obviously still a sore point for a lot of Argentinians.