Balangon: First Spanish Settlement in Batangas
The Spanish presence in Batangas began soon after the Conquistadores Martín de Goiti and Juan de Salcedo, who were sent by Miguel López de Legazpi to explore lands north of the Visayas, entered Southern Luzon in 1570–72. Their expeditions subdued villages along the Batangas coast and opened the way for missionaries1.
The Augustinians were the first friars to arrive. Their chronicles state that the pueblo of Taal was founded around 1572. Fray Diego Espina — also written as Espinas — established the first mission station with the help of Spanish soldiers2.
This first pueblo stood at Balangon, a lakeside sitio on the southeastern shore of Lake Bombón, the old name of Taal Lake3. It was close to native settlements, which made it easier to gather converts. Balangon was also defensible and surrounded by fertile soil.
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| AI interpreted image of a scene at the sixteenth century pueblo of Balangon in what is now Batangas. |
The word pueblo means town. In Spanish colonial practice, it referred to a formally recognized settlement with both a church and civil administration.
Balangon, thus, marked the beginning of Batangas as a Christian province. Other pueblos would be established on lakeside sites around Taal Lake which would become the beginnings of the Province of Bombón, later to become Batangas.
Sources describe Balangon at first as a visita. A visita was a dependent mission station, visited occasionally by a friar until it was large enough to become a pueblo in its own right4.
The location, however, proved difficult to maintain. From the late 1500’s through the 1600’s, Balangon was attacked several times by raiders from the south, referred to in colonial records as Moros5 — Muslim pirates. These raids led the Spaniards and Augustinians to move the poblacion or town center to another lakeside area, what is now part of San Nicolás6.
This new lakeside location would become the town that became known as Taal. However, another relocation came after the 1754 eruption of Taal Volcano. That eruption buried the old lakeside town and forced its inhabitants to rebuild near the shores of Balayan Bay7.
Mentions of Balangon survive mainly in church records. The Augustinian province in Manila, known as the Provincia del Santísimo Nombre de Jesús de Filipinas, listed it among its earliest missions9. Archival references also appear in the Archivo General de Indias (AGI) in Seville, which preserves reports on “Bombón” and its visitas9.
Local Batangas historians, such as Luciano P. Rillo, have written about Balangon by consulting these church and Spanish records10. Modern works on Augustinian history also note Balangon as the first Taal site11.
Today, Balangon is not a town but a memory — albeit a barrio by the same name remains in what is now the Municipality of Agoncillo. It remains significant because it was the earliest Spanish pueblo in Batangas. Its short life shows the fluid and often dangerous beginnings of colonial settlement in Southern Luzon by the Spanish Conquistadores.
2 “Angels in Stone: Augustinian Churches in the Philippines,” by Pedro G. Galende, 1996, G.A. Formoso Publishing.
3 “Batangas: Its History, People and Culture,” By Isacio R. Medina, 1992, University of Santo Tomas Publishing House.
4 Ibid.
5 “Ang Mga Unang Bayan sa Batangas,” by Luciano P. Rillo, 1975, Batangas Heritage Series.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 “Catálogo de los pueblos de la provincia del Santísimo Nombre de Jesús de Filipinas,” by Archivo de la Provincia Agustiniana de Filipinas, 1590, Manila.
9 “Audiencia de Filipinas series,” by 16th–17th century.
10 Rillo, op. cit.
11 Galende, op. cit.