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.
It is a common misconception that the word "Filipino" only referred to the Spanish population that settled in the Philippines during the colonial period. But in his book Barangay, the American historian William Henry Scott wrote that, though the Spaniards called the natives of the islands they named Filipinas, indios, ". . . when it was necessary to distinguish the indios of the Philippines from those of the Americas, they were called Filipinos. So Pedro Chirino’s 1604 Relación has a chapter on “The food and terms of course and food manners of the Filipinos” (Chirino 1604, 36), and Juan Francisco de San Antonio devotes a chapter of his 1738 Crónicas to “The letters, languages, and politeness of the Philipinos” (San Antonio 1738, 140), . . . In short, the people of the Philippines were called Filipinos when they were practicing their own culture — or, to put it another way, before they became indios”. He later on explains the misconception: “In the nineteenth century, Spaniards born in the colony began to be called Españoles filipinos to distinguish them from Spaniards born in Spain, a designation which was logically contracted to Filipinos when speaking of Spaniards. . . Sinibaldo de Mas (1843, 138) in his 1842 population estimates, more neutrally divides Spaniards and Filipinos into the following categories — Filipinos (indios), Espanoles filipinos, and Españoles europeos. “Indio filipino” was just how Francisco Suárez signed himself a century before when he engraved a portrait of Philip V for Pedro Murillo Velarde’s 1743 Cusus Juris Canonici (frontispiece), and native Filipinos were still using the term in the next century. As Jose Rizal (1887,111) said of the Philippine community in Madrid, “Creoles, Mestizos and Malays, we simply call ourselves Filipinos.” Furthermore, a manuscript prepared by Filipinas Royal Commissioner Don Sinibaldo de Mas, which was published in Madrid in 1843, referred to the natives as ‘filipinos’ who "originated in Borneo" and "believed in a powerful God they called Bathala Maykapal". de Mas furthermore iterated that the Spaniards "improperly" called the natives indios/Indians, and that there were many inhabitants in the islands who "passed as Filipinos and paid tribute", though they had European ancestry.
Spaniards, Latin Americans and Spanish-speaking Filipinos were referred to by native Filipinos as "Kastila", a word for "Castilian" which means the region and language of Castile.
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 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 second phase of 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 Ynchausti y Compañia, MBC Media Group, Ayala Corporation (Ayala Land, Bank of the Philippine Islands, Globe Telecom, Integrated Micro-Electronics, Inc.), Aboitiz & Company, (Aboitiz Power, Union Bank of the Philippines), ANSCOR (Amanpulo), Razon & Co. Inc. (International Container Terminal Services Inc., Manila Water, Solaire Resort & Casino, Apex Mining Co., Inc.) 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" (Spanish migrants living in the colony). Their succeeding generation known as "Criollos" (Spaniards of pure White blood, born and raised in the colony) contributed to the population's development.
For centuries several hundreds of 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 descendants consisting of "Criollos" or "Insulares" and "Mestizos" (those of "mixed-blood" individuals) 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 (plantation estates) 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 Europeans, social intercourse between foreign merchants, and indigenous people resulted in a new ethnic group. These groups were called Mestizos (mixed-race individuals), who were born from intermarriages from 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" (Nobility) 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
Joaquín Martínez de Zúñiga Census