Spanish Filipinos


Spanish Filipino or Hispanic Filipino are people of Spanish and Filipino heritage. The term includes all individuals of Spanish descent in the Philippines, including criollos and mestizos who identify with Spanish culture, history and language.
According to the 2020 Philippine census, 4,952 individual citizens self-identified as ethnically Spanish in the Philippines.
Forming a small part of the Spanish diaspora, the heritage of Spanish Filipinos may come recently from Spain, from descendants of the earlier Spanish settlers during the Spanish colonial period in the Philippines, or from Spain's viceroyalties in Hispanic America, such as Mexico, whose capital Mexico City held administrative power over the captaincy general of the Philippines in the colonial era.
Many of their communities in Spain, the Americas, Australia, and the Philippines trace their origin to the early settlers from Europe and Mexico during the Spanish colonial period as well as native populations of Southeast Asia, and in recent overseas migration in the 1900s.
In the Philippines depending on the specific provinces, in the late 1700s to early 1800s they formed as much as 19% in the capital city of Manila at formerly named Tondo province, and about 1.38% of the Ilocos region, 2.17% of Cebu or 16.72% of Bataan and other parts of the country.
The Spanish population that settled in the Philippines during the colonial period were originally referred to as "Filipinos". Spaniards, Latin Americans and Spanish-speaking Filipinos are referred to by native Filipinos as "Kastila", a word for "Castilian" which means the region and language of Castile, or an individual of Spanish heritage. Native Filipinos in historical terms are referred to by the Spaniards as "Indio".
Filipinos of Spanish backgrounds numbered at about 4,952 people, while Mestizo Filipinos of mixed native Filipino and European ancestry made up about 5% of the Philippines' population during the 1700s.
The abrupt decline of Spanish Filipinos as a percentage of the population is due to the events of the Philippine Revolution during the Philippine Republic in the late 1800s, as Filipinos of Spanish heritage choose to identify themselves as pure native Filipino, as part of establishing a united national identity in the country, or some have relocated back to Spain, or have migrated to other countries during that period.
During and after the Philippine Revolution, the term "Filipino" included people of all nationalities and race, born in the Philippines.
Today, Hispanic Filipinos are found in all social classes worldwide, from upper wealthy to lower poor disadvantage backgrounds, and from high profiled individuals to ordinary unknown people. They have long integrated into the native communities living their lives as ordinary citizens. However most of the successful individuals are present in economics and business sectors in the Philippines and a few sources estimate companies which comprise a significant portion of the Philippine economy like International Container Terminal Services Inc., Manila Water, Integrated Micro-Electronics, Inc., Ayala Land, Ynchausti y Compañia, Ayala Corporation, Aboitiz & Company, Union Bank of the Philippines, ANSCOR, Bank of the Philippine Islands, Globe Telecom, Solaire Resort & Casino, and Central Azucarera de La Carlota, to name but a few are owned by Hispanic Filipinos.

History

The history of the Spanish Philippines covers the period from 1521 to 1898, beginning with the arrival in 1521 of the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailing for Spain, which heralded the period when the Philippines was an overseas province of Spain, and ends with the outbreak of the Spanish–American War in 1898.
The Spanish discovery of the American continent by the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492, an expedition sponsored by Queen Isabella I of Castille and King Ferdinand II of Aragon, laid the foundation of settlements and explorations in the New World. Spain became the first European country to permanently colonized the American continent in 1492.
In 1541, Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos was commissioned by Antonio de Mendoza, the viceroy of New Spain and first colonial administrator in the New World, to send an expedition to the Philippines to establish a larger Spanish presence there as a base for trade with the Spice Islands and China and to extend Spanish control over the Moluccas in the Portuguese East Indies. The expedition ultimately failed, with Villalobos dying in a Portuguese prison on Ambon Island in 1546.
In 1564, conquistadors led by Miguel López de Legazpi, prompted the colonization of the Philippine Islands that lasted for 333 years. The Philippines was a former territory of New Spain until the grant of independence to Mexico in 1821 necessitated the direct government from Spain of the Philippines from that year. Early Spanish settlers to the Philippines were mostly explorers, soldiers, government officials, religious missionaries, and among others, who were born in Spain or in Mexico called "Peninsulares". Their succeeding generation known as "Criollos" contributed to the population's development.
For centuries several hundreds of White Spaniards settled in the islands along with their families to start a new beginning in the New World, to take advantage of the rich and exotic resources the colony had to offer. Some of these individuals married or inter-bred with the indigenous Filipino population while most married only other Spaniards. Their descendance that consisted of "Criollos" or "Insulares" and "Mestizos" became part of the island's indigenous society; some became town officers and farmers, and others became ordinary citizens.
Government officials and those of high ranks were granted with haciendas by the Spanish government. In some provinces like, Vigan, Iloilo, Cebu, Pampanga, and Zamboanga, The Spanish government encouraged foreign merchants from Southeast Asia and the Asian continent to trade in the colony, along with the European and indigenous population, but they were not given certain privileges such as ownership of land.
Contacts with White Europeans, social intercourse between foreign merchants, and indigenous people resulted in a new ethnic group. These group were called Mestizos, who were born from intermarriages from White European Spaniards and indigenous Austronesian-speaking Filipino natives. Some of their descendants emerged later as an influential part of the ruling class called the "Principalía" class.
The Spanish implemented incentives to deliberately entangle the various races together in order to stop rebellions. According to a historical colonial conversation that was published, stated by a government official explains: "It is needful to encourage public instruction in all ways possible, permit newspapers subject to a liberal censure, to establish in Manila a college of medicine, surgery, and pharmacy: in order to break down the barriers that divide the races, and amalgamate them all into one. For that purpose, the Spaniards of the country, the Chinese mestizos, and the Filipinos shall be admitted with perfect equality as cadets of the military corps; the personal-service tax shall be abolished, or an equal and general tax shall be imposed, to which all the Spaniards shall be subject. This last plan appears to me more advisable, as the poll-tax is already established, and it is not opportune to make a trial of new taxes when it is a question of allowing the country to be governed by itself. Since the annual tribute is unequal, the average shall be taken and shall be fixed, consequently, at fifteen or sixteen reals per whole tribute, or perhaps one peso fuerte annually from each adult tributary person. This regulation will produce an increase in the revenue of 200,000 or 300,000 pesos fuertes, and this sum shall be set aside to give the impulse for the amalgamation of the races, favoring crossed marriages by means of dowries granted to the single women in the following manner. To a Chinese mestizo woman who marries a Filipino shall be given 100 pesos; to a Filipino woman who marries a Chinese mestizo, 100 pesos; to a Chinese mestizo woman who marries a Spaniard, 1,000 pesos; to a Spanish woman who marries a Chinese mestizo, 2,000 pesos; to a Filipino woman who marries a Spaniard, 2,000 pesos; to a Spanish woman who marries a Filipino chief, 3,000 or 4,000 pesos. Some mestizo and Filipino alcaldes-mayor of the provinces shall be appointed. It shall be ordered that when a Filipino chief goes to the house of a Spaniard, he shall seat himself as the latter's equal. In a word, by these and other means, the idea that they and the Castilians are two kinds of distinct races shall be erased from the minds of the natives, and the families shall become related by marriage in such manner that when free of the Castilian dominion should any exalted Filipinos try to expel or enslave our race, they would find it so interlaced with their own that their plan would be practically impossible".
Filipinos and other Asians were brought to Mexico as slaves and servants, while some Africans were brought to the Philippines by the Portuguese traders, to work on plantation settlements as slave workers or settlers working in the colony. Between 1565 and 1815, both Filipinos and people from Latin America and Spain sailed to, and from the Philippines in the Manila galleon trade to Acapulco, assisting Spain in its trade on the colony.

Population

Colonial statistics

In the late 1700s to early 1800s, Joaquín Martínez de Zúñiga, an Agustinian Friar from Spain, in his Two Volume Book: "Estadismo de
las islas Filipinas" compiled a census of the Spanish-Philippines based on the tribute counts and came upon the following statistics:
ProvinceNative TributesSpanish Mestizo TributesAll Tributes
Tondo14,537-1/23,52827,897-7
Cavite5,724-1/28599,132-4
Laguna14,392-1/233619,448-6
Batangas15,01445121,579-7
Mindoro3,1653-1/24,000-8
Bulacan16,586-1/22,00725,760-5
Pampanga16,604-1/22,64127,358-1
Bataan3,0826195,433
Zambales1,136734,389
Ilocos44,852-1/263168,856
Pangasinan19,836719-1/225,366
Cagayan9,888011,244-6
Camarines19,686-1/2154-1/224,994
Albay12,33914616,093
Tayabas7,396129,228
Cebu28,112-1/262528,863
Samar3,0421034,060
Leyte7,67837-1/210,011
Caraga3,49704,977
Misamis1,27801,674
Negros Island5,74107,176
Iloilo29,72316637,760
Capiz11,4598914,867
Antique9,228011,620
Calamianes2,28903,161
TOTAL299,04913,201 424,992-16

The Spanish-Filipino population as a proportion of the provinces widely varied; with as high as 19% of the population of Tondo province, to Pampanga 13.7%, Cavite at 13%, Laguna 2.28%, Batangas 3%, Bulacan 10.79%, Bataan 16.72%, Ilocos 1.38%, Pangasinan 3.49%, Albay 1.16%, Cebu 2.17%, Samar 3.27%,
Iloilo 1%, Capiz 1%, Bicol 20%, and Zamboanga 40%. According to the 1893 data in the Archdiocese of Manila which administers much of Luzon under it, about 10% of the population was then Spanish-Filipino. Overall the whole Philippines, even including the provinces with no Spanish settlement, as summed up, the average percentage of Spanish Filipino tributes amount to 5% of the total population.