Iloilo City, officially the City of Iloilo (; ; ), is a highly urbanized city in the Western Visayas region of the Philippines, located on the southeastern coast of the island of Panay. According to the , it has a population of people, making it the most populous city in Western Visayas. For the Iloilo–Guimaras metropolitan area, the total population is 1,039,935 people.
The city is a conglomeration of former towns, now organized into seven geographical or administrative districts: the City Proper, Jaro, Molo, Mandurriao, La Paz, Arevalo, and Lapuz.City to recognize Lapuz as separate district from La Paz . Thenewstoday.info (December 22, 2008). Retrieved on November 7, 2011. It is the largest city and capital of the Iloilo province, where the city is geographically situated and grouped under the Philippine Statistics Authority, but remains politically independent in terms of government and administration. Iloilo City is the regional center of Western Visayas and serves as the hub for trade, commerce, industry, education, religion, healthcare, tourism, culture, and culinary arts.
In 1566, the Spanish settled in Iloilo, establishing it as the second Spanish colonial center in the Philippines after Cebu. The city was bestowed with the honorific title "La Muy Leal y Noble Ciudad" (Most Loyal and Noble City) by Queen Regent Maria Christina of Austria in recognition of its loyalty to the Spanish crown during the Philippine Revolution. Iloilo City served as the last capital of the Spanish Empire in Asia and the Pacific before the Philippines was ceded to the United States in 1898 through the Treaty of Paris.The end of the Spanish Empire in Iloilo . Retrieved 24 October 2020. At the turn of the 20th century, Iloilo City was considered the second most important city in the Philippines, next to Manila, and was widely known as the "Queen City of the South."
Recognized as a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy, Iloilo City is known for its signature dishes such as La Paz Batchoy, Pancit Molo, Kadyos-Baboy-Langka (KBL), Laswa, and Kansi. Iloilo City has several heritage sites from the Spanish and American colonial periods, including the Calle Real Heritage Zone. Iloilo City is considered a pilgrim city and is known as the center of Candelaria devotion in the Philippines, as it home to the Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria de Jaro, the first Marian image in Asia to be canonically crowned in person by a pope, now Saint John Paul II. The city is known for the Dinagyang Festival, a popular cultural and religious festival held every January, in honor of Santo Niño.
Iloilo City is among the fastest-developing cities in the Philippines, experiencing significant annual growth since the redevelopment of the old airport in Mandurriao. The IT-BPM industry in the city continues to thrive and remains in high demand. It has been recognized as a top location for outsourcing expansion outside Metro Manila and is the third-largest hub for the industry in the country.
Etymology
The name "Iloilo" is derived from the older name "Irong-irong" (Philippine Spanish: Ilong̃-ílong̃) meaning "nose-like", referring to the promontory between two rivers (Iloilo and Batiano) where the Fort San Pedro and the 17th-century Spanish port were located.
History
Early history
The earliest written reference to Iloilo appears in Yuan Dynasty records from the 1300s, identifying Oton—west of Iloilo City—as in Hokkien ,Reading Song and Ming Records on the Precolonial History of the Philippines By Wang Zhenping Page 256. a bustling trade outpost in the Visayas.Mamuel Merino, O.S.A., ed., Conquistas de las Islas Filipinas (1565–1615), Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1975, pp. 374–376.
Although, little is known historically about the region prior to the arrival of the Spanish, Jesuit missionary Francisco Ignacio Alcina, in his 1668 work Historia natural del sitio, fertilidad y calidad de las Islas e Indios de Bisayas, identifies the Hiligaynon people originated from Leyte, aligning with linguistic subgrouping of the Hiligaynon language.
Local legends, notably the epic Maragtas by Pedro Monteclaro (published 1907), offer a different origin story. It describes how ten datus, led by Datu Puti, fled Borneo to escape the tyrant Sultan Makatunaw, arriving in Panay and purchasing its lowlands from the Ati king Marikudo with a golden salakot and a necklace for his queen, Maniwan-tiwan. The transaction, followed by a pact of friendship, is said to have inspired the Dinagyang Festival.
Though once widely accepted and included in school textbooks, Maragtas (along with the Code of Kalantiaw) is now considered a 20th-century hoax, a view solidified by historian William Henry Scott’s 1968 critique, upheld by experts like Gregorio Zaide and Teodoro Agoncillo. A 2019 thesis by Talaguit cites an earlier version of the story by Augustinian Friar Rev. Fr. Tomas Santaren (1902), based on manuscripts he obtained in Iloilo after 1858. Though Santaren's account supports Monteclaro's, the manuscripts, written in romanized Hiligaynon during the colonial era, likely reflect oral folklore rather than pre-colonial history. Thus, while Maragtas may reflect elements of local folk history, it is unlikely to be a pre-colonial document and is not regarded as authentic history but rather a blend of tradition and invention.Tomas Santaren, Bisayan Accounts of Early Bornean Settlements in the Philippines, trans by Enriqueta Fox, (Chicago: University of Chicago, Philippine Studies Program, 1954), ii. Albeit it is argued that the nearby miraculous and syncretistic image of our Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria de Jaro which show partial pre-colonial origins, also postulate that the people of Panay and Iloilo have origins to Borneo and to ancient Srivijaya, the alleged root of the Visayans as the Golden Elephant worn by the Christ-Child is the most holy animal in Buddhism and Hinduism, which is the religion the Srivijaya Empire practiced.
Within the context of this folklore, Datu Paiburong is identified as one of the ten datus from Borneo who settled in Panay Island and is traditionally regarded as the first ruler of Irong-Irong, the area corresponding to present-day Iloilo. He is said to have established a polity that became a center of trade and agriculture, contributing to the early socio-political development of Western Visayas.
As the ruling datu of Irong-Irong, Paiburong is credited with organizing one of the earliest systems of local governance in the region, fostering alliances with other datus of Panay and codifying customary laws that promoted order and cooperation among early settlers. Although his existence is not corroborated by contemporary historical sources, Datu Paiburong remains a significant cultural figure in Iloilo's precolonial heritage, symbolizing the region's legendary beginnings and the enduring memory of Visayan leadership prior to Spanish colonization.
Spanish period
Under Philip II in 1565, Miguel López de Legazpi, tasked with expanding Spanish dominion in the Philippines, sent his grandson Felipe de Salcedo, alongside Augustinian missionaries such as Martín de Rada, to explore the Visayas for resources. Landing on Panay, they established a temporary settlement in Araut, to secure food supplies amid scarcity in Cebu. By 1566, a more permanent foothold emerged between Ogtong (Oton) and La Villa Rica de Arevalo, formalized when Oton was established as a colonial outpost in 1572 under Legazpi's command. This made Oton the second official Spanish settlement in the archipelago after Cebu. The city was founded by 80 pure Spaniards from Europe. In 1586, it welcomed another 20 European Spanish Households and the garrison was reinforced by 30 Spanish and Mexican soldiers."Jesuits In The Philippines (1581-1768)" Page 143 This was reinforced by a consecutive number of 66, 50, 169, and then another 169 Mexican soldiers from Latin America during the years 1603, 1636, 1670, and 1672.Convicts or Conquistadores? Spanish Soldiers in the Seventeenth-Century Pacific By Stephanie J. Mawson AGI, México, leg. 25, núm. 62; AGI, Filipinas, leg. 8, ramo 3, núm. 50; leg. 10, ramo 1, núm. 6; leg. 22, ramo 1, núm. 1, fos. 408 r –428 v; núm. 21; leg. 32, núm. 30; leg. 285, núm. 1, fos. 30 r –41 v . Later in the 1700s, Iloilo was home to 166 Spanish Filipino families and 29,723 native families.ESTADISMO DE LAS ISLAS FILIPINAS TOMO SEGUNDO By Joaquín Martínez de Zúñiga (Original Spanish) Of which 103 Spanish-Filipino families were in downtown Iloilo city proper alone, while another 23 Spanish-Filipino families lived in the separate Chinatown of Molo, other natives and mestizos were scattered across the varying cities and municipalities of province. And excluding the pure Spanish-Filipinos, there were still 470 Spanish-Filipino mestizo families; as well as 11 pure Chinese-Filipino families, and 665 Chinese-Filipino mestizo families that were scattered all across the province of Iloilo.(110)
The people of Panay, unlike the neutral Cebuanos or the partially Islamized Tagalogs of Manila who resisted Spanish rule, embraced the Iberians as allies. At the time, Panay was embroiled in a struggle against Muslim forces from the Sultanate of Brunei and its vassals, the Sultanate of Sulu and the Kingdom of Maynila, which Spanish Governor-General Francisco de Sande described as kin to the locals. The alliance proved pivotal, as Panay natives supplied a significant portion of the mercenary forces used to subdue Manila's rulers, who were tied to Brunei. The rapid adoption of Christianity among the Panaynons facilitated their integration into the Spanish colonial framework. Before Spanish contact, Visayan groups, including those from Panay, were notorious for their piracy and slave-raiding expeditions, known locally as panggubat. The raids, often launched after harvests or during specific months like February to April, targeted coastal and inland settlements across the archipelago, striking fear into neighboring regions. Under Spanish influence, Christianization and Hispanization transformed these fierce raiders into disciplined soldiers and farmers, marking a significant cultural shift.Salman, Michael. "Resisting Slavery in the Philippines: Ambivalent Domestication and the Reversibility of Comparisons," Slavery & Abolition 25 no. 2 (2004) 30.Schwalbenberg, Henry M. "The Economics of Pre-Hispanic Visayan Slave Raiding," Philippine Studies 42, no. 3 (1994) 376-84.