Salt-Making in Batangas: From Coastal Wealth to Cultural Memory

Batangas salt-making has long been a vital livelihood, shaping both the province’s economy and culture. Its coastal geography, with shallow bays and long dry seasons, provided the natural conditions that made this tradition flourish for centuries.

The industry once stood as both a source of local pride and a pillar of trade in southern Luzon.

The earliest accounts of Batangas’ salt-making industry appear in Spanish colonial records. The Diccionario Geográfico, Estadístico, Histórico de las Islas Filipinas (1850’s) described Balayan as a town producing large amounts of salt, alongside its fishing and agriculture¹.

Salt was central not only to preservation and cooking but also to producing condiments like bagoong and patis, staples of Tagalog cuisine.

Above is an AI-generated image of a man harvesting salt from a drying field.

Ethnographic research confirms the deep roots of this practice. Reynaldo Nagac’s Ethnohistory of Saltmaking in the Philippines (1999) documented how Batangas followed the classic solar-evaporation method². Seawater was poured into pans (irasan) lined with clay or lime, then dried by the sun until salt crystals formed.

The harvested salt was coarse but valued for its purity and abundance.

This labor required skill, timing, and resilience. Workers balanced the effects of sun, wind, and rain to ensure steady production.

The work was seasonal, tied to the dry months, but when successful, salt yielded steady incomes for families along Batangas Bay. Salt workers became known as mag-aasin, their craft often passed down through generations.

Batangas’ position along maritime trade routes gave its salt regional importance. Nagac noted that Chinese and Japanese traders valued Batangas salt in exchange for ceramics and other goods³.

Local records also indicate that the Spanish colonial government taxed salt heavily, recognizing its profitability⁴.

By the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, salt production in Batangas faced a steep decline. Imported salt from other regions, alongside industrial production methods, outcompeted local practices.

Nagac observed that by the 1990’s, very few families continued the tradition, and some salt beds lay abandoned⁵. This decline was not just economic but cultural, as a craft that once defined coastal Batangas slowly faded from daily life.

The memory of Batangas salt-making is more than just a vanished industry; it is a story of resilience and adaptation, echoing across the province’s cultural memory.

In its heyday, it tied Batangas to global trade networks and nourished Filipino cuisine. Today, its traces survive in oral histories and in the few remaining salt beds that stand as quiet reminders of a coastal heritage once central to Batangueño identity.