UNDER IMPERIAL SPAIN

Chapter 5
 The most spectacular change during the renaissance which shaped the
course of history was the opening of the world to European Shipping.
Propelled by Gospel, Gold and Glory and supported by much improved
technology new types of ships, sailing charts and maps, navigational
instrument, gunpowder and superior high-powdered arms. The two Iberian
superpowers of Spain and Portugal pushed through their goals to discover
the rest of the world.
 Making the food more palatable to the most discriminating medieval
tastes triggered the search for spices of all sorts: pepper, cinnamon, cloves,
nutmeg, and ginger which where indigenous to the east. Spices accented
the bland taste of meat and fish while preserving them in the absence of
refrigeration. So expensive were spices like black pepper that it could even
buy land, pay taxes, liberate a city, even pay dowries.
Merchant suddenly became important in the eyes of the people, and they
not only became richer but also powerful in the more famous trading cities
of italy.
 Portugal was the first country to use innovation in seamanship and boat
building with the establishment by Henry The navigator of the first
navigational school in the globe at Sagres Point in 1419. Spain however,
had earlier dispatched the first truly momentous exploration in modern times.
Inspired by Florentine map maker Paolo Toscanelli to discover westward sea
route to india, Christopher Columbus instead made a landfall in Guanahani
Island in October 1492 and two weeks later on the coast of Cuba.
 In 1494, treaty of tordesillas was signed which partitioned the non- christian
world into two spheres of influence. It faithfully followed the papal bull of
1943 granting the new world to Spain, while Africa and India were reserved
only to Portugal.
 (1518-1521)
Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese serving the spanish royalty, saw action
for his country in the east, first in India with Alfonso de Almeida in 1505, and
with distinction in the fall of Malacca in 1511. His original suggestion of
reaching the Maluku (the Spice Island) by sailing westward was rejected by
his King. It was Ruy Faleiro a brilliant cosmographer, who egged him to
serve Spain as he was then not in the good grace of the Lisbon court.
 In 1518, he convinced Charles V that he could find a shorter way to the
Maluku by sailing westward via the Americas. Thus began the greatest of
all epics human discovery when he sailed from San Lucar, Spain in 151, on
board five very antiquated ships with crew of 235 men. He sailed around
the southern tip of South America, across the vast Pacific Ocean after 98
days of sailing northwestward.
 Magellan finally reached the Philippines in March 17, 1521. In Mactan he
was defeated and killed in battle in April 1521, as a consequence of his
intervention in a dispute between Lapulapu and Zula. Only one ship, in
fact the smallest Of them, the Victoria, completed the Voyage back to
Spain in 1522, Arriving in Seville led by Juan Sebastian Del Cano.
It was through this trip that the Europeans first learned of the existence of
the Philippines. It also proved that the earth is round It established the
vastness of the Pacific Ocean. It proved that the Indies could be reach by
crossing the Pacific. It showed that the Americas was really a land mass
entirely separate from Asia.
 Three Spanish Expeditions followed Magellans this time, which had become
the Spanish colony- The Saavedra (1527-29), the Villalobos (1541-46) and the
most succesful of all, the Legazpi expedition(1564).
The first voyage to the pacific fitted from the Americas sailed on the eve of
All Saints day in 1527 under the command of Alfonso de Saavedra Ceron,
with a squadron of 3 ships and a crew of some 115 men. His instruction
included the discovery of mexican-Maluku route via the Pacific ocean and
the release and searh for of any survivors of Magellan expedition.
Saavedra reached what is probably now known Lanuza bay, overlooking
Tundug (Surigao del sur) by February 1528, following Magellan route.
Saavedra never returned to Mexico as he died on the high seas.
 In 1529, King Charles V ceded his alleged rights to Maluku to John III of
Portugal for 350,000 ducats, not knowing that they rightfully belonged to
Portuguese area of responsibility as provided for in the Treaty of Tordesillas.
Under the able command of Ruy de Villalobos, six ships and some 370
men, departed from Juan Gallego (Navidad), Mexico in November 1542.
By early 1543 they reached the eastern coast of Mindanao. At Sarangani
Island, Villalobos essayed to set up a colony and even ordered his men to
plow the land to plant corn-the first time on Philippines soil.
 Forced to leave Sarangani, Villalobos surrendered to the Portuguese at
amboina in the Maluku, where he succumed to a malignant fever. The
greatest contribution of the Villalobos expedition was the naming of
Tandaya or Kandaya (Leyte) in 1543 as Las Phelipinasin in honor of then
crown-prince Philip II, by Bernardo de la Torre(Capitan Calabaza),
commander of the ship, San Juan de Letran.
 By February 1565, Legazpi reached Cebu and contracted blood compacts
with Si Katunaw and Si Gala at Bohol. In April of the same year, Villa de San
Miguel, later changed to Ciudad del Santissimo Nombre de Jesus, after the
discovered Santo Nio of Cebu, became the first Spanish town established
in the archipelago and the pioneer permanent settlement in the Philippines.
Fr. Andres de Urdaneta, Legazpi chief pilot, whose expertise of the
seasonal winds he had acquired while with the loaisa expedition,
discoverder the Urdaneta Passage on his return to the Natividad via the
Pacific. This unique sea lane was subsequently used by the Manila
Acapulco galleons until the nineteenth century.
 It was very easy, indeed for Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, who was granted by
King Philip II, the peerless and single title of Adelantado de Filipinas to
accomplish almost bloodless conquest of the Philippines considering its
physical and mental geography. There existed on the eve of the coming
of the Spaniards fragmented units of island and islets of various sizes
separated by numberless bodies of water , as well as multiple ethnolinguistic
groups, mostly animistic, and in the south Islamized.
 The hierarchical political set-up of the Philippines during the Spanish regime
may be seen in the political institutions establish by the colonial power. All
Spanish possessions were governed by the Real y Supremo Consejo de las
Indias (Royal and supreme council of Indies) Bureaucacy in the colonial
Philippines maybe divided into different level of administration, from the
central or national , provincial, city, municipal and barrio levels.
Only a Spaniard could be an alcalde mayor or a corregidor. He exercised
multiple prerogatives as judge, inspector of encomiendas, chief of police,
tribute collector, and even vice-regal patron and captain general of the
province. By the end of the Seventeenth century, there were only 6 cities
or villas established in Luzon and the Visayas: Manila, Villa Fernandina
(Vigan), Nueva Segovia (Lal-lo, Cagayan), Nueva Caceres (Naga), Cebu
and Arevalo (also called Villa Iloilo.
 To check the abuse of power of royal officials, two ancient Castilian
institutions, the residencia and the visita were transplanted into the
Philippines soil. The residencia dating back to the fifteenth century in spain
was first resorted to in the Indies (Spanish possession in Amerasia including
the Philippines) in 1501. It was the judicial review of a residenciado (one
judged) conducted at the end of his term of office, supervised publicly by a
juez de recidencia.
The visita differed from the recidensia in that it visitador-generalas
conducted clandestinely by a sent from Spain and might occur anytime
within the officials term, without any previous notice. A specific visita
meant an investigationof a single official or a province: A general visita
meant an inventigation of the viceroyalty like Mexico or Captaincy-general
like the Philippines.
 On the municipal level, the little governor or gobernadorcillo (later
replaced by the captain municipal in 1894), headed the pueblo or
municipio. Any Filipino or Chinese Mestizo, 25 years old literate in oral or
written spanish and who had been cabeza de barangay for 4 years could
be gobernadorcillo. This was the highest government position a Filipino
could attain during Spanish regime, and together with the parish priest his
role was considered highly significant in a town.
Barrio government rested on the cabeza de barangay whose main role
was a tax and a contribution collector for the gobernadorcillo. Like the
latter, the cabeza were exempted from taxation. Like the gobernadorcillo,
he was responsible for peace and order in his own barrio and recruited
polistas for communal public works.
 Required literacy in Spanish, good moral character, and property-
ownership as qualification for cabezas who served for three years terms. By
the mid-nineteenth century, cabeza who had served for twenty- five years
where exempted for forced labor
It was in the exercise of political and economic powers of the spanish
clergy that we can perceive very clearly the disunity between the churh and
state. The disgusting feature such as the church meddling in civil
government and press censorship were succinctly pointed out by filipino
Laborantes (reformers) as well as revolucionarios in the nineteenth century.
In fact the separation of of church and state became one of the
outstanding innovation of the Malolos Constitution in 1898.
 The high influence of the Church on the State was exposed by Filipinos,
among the Marcelo H. Del Pilar who derisively called the situation in the
Philippines la soberania monacal (monastic supremacy) frailocracia
(friarocracy), because the Spanish priars or monastic orders ruled supreme,
even over governmental matters. Probably the most persistent complaint
leveled by the Filipinos against the church was its economic role as
landowners, in particular the dominicans, Augustinians, and the recollect.
BY:
Jasper Jeanne L. Caparoso
Lovely Santos