Batangas Province's Capital Could Have Been Laurel City

The City of Batangas has been the capital of Batangas Province since 1754, when the provincial capital was transferred from Taal to its present site following the destruction of old Taal in the great volcanic eruption of 1749–1754¹. The province itself, however, had been formally established much earlier, in 1581, while the capital had previously been located in Balayan and Taal².

Until 1969, the provincial capital remained a municipality. Its cityhood came twenty-two years after Lipa, to the north, had become a chartered city under Republic Act No. 162 in 1947³.

But there is a largely forgotten episode in the history of Batangas that makes the story considerably more interesting. The provincial capital was granted a city charter in 1965, but cityhood failed to take effect after the proposal was rejected in a plebiscite held on November 9, 1965⁴.

To understand how this happened, it is first necessary to understand how municipalities became cities in the Philippines during this period. Before the establishment of uniform statutory criteria under later local-government legislation, chartered cities were generally created through individual acts of Congress. Lipa's cityhood, for example, was accomplished simply through Republic Act No. 162, which created the City of Lipa out of the existing municipality and provided for a separate city government. The law took effect upon approval on June 20, 1947⁵.

The same legislative approach was used for Batangas in 1965. Congress did not first declare that the municipality had passed a standardized population or income test. Instead, it enacted a specific charter — Republic Act No. 4586 — creating Laurel City out of the entire existing territorial jurisdiction of the Municipality of Batangas⁶.

AI-depiction of a local plebiscite for Laurel City.

The charter was comprehensive. It established the city as a corporate political entity, provided for a city mayor and municipal board, transferred municipal functions to the new city government, and provided for the administration of such matters as public health, taxation, police, fire protection and public works. Most significantly for the province, the proposed Laurel City was explicitly designated to remain the capital of Batangas Province⁷.

In other words, Congress saw no contradiction between Batangas being the provincial capital and becoming a city. The issue was not whether cityhood was administratively possible. Congress had already enacted the charter.

The movement for cityhood appears to have had an important local component. The Batangas City government, commemorating the city's fiftieth anniversary in 2019, specifically honored the municipal officials who had led the successful cityhood movement in 1969 under Mayor Pedro Tolentino Sr., Vice Mayor Rustico Borbon and members of the Sangguniang Bayan⁸.

A later recollection attributed to former Vice Mayor Joe Tolentino provides a more detailed account of the earlier movement. According to this recollection, Mayor Pedro S. Tolentino, together with the municipal council and department heads, approached Governor Feliciano “Sanoy” Leviste to seek his support for the conversion of Batangas into a city. The same account says that Speaker José B. Laurel Jr. subsequently helped secure the governor's support, after which legislation was pursued to create the proposed Laurel City⁹.

This latter account is valuable as an oral-history lead, but it should be treated cautiously. The available primary legislative record confirms that House Bill No. 11198 became Republic Act No. 4586, “An Act Creating Laurel City,” on June 19, 1965, but the law itself does not identify the political negotiations that brought the measure before Congress¹⁰.

Why, then, did Batangas leaders want cityhood in the first place?

The surviving charter provides part of the answer, although it does not state in so many words the local political arguments used to promote the measure. Conversion meant replacing the existing municipal government with a chartered city government possessing a broader range of corporate and administrative powers. For a provincial capital that had long served as an administrative, commercial and transportation center, city status could therefore provide a more substantial governmental framework for its continuing development. The later 1969 charter likewise created a full city government while preserving Batangas as the provincial capital¹¹.

The more intriguing question is why the 1965 legislation was rejected.

Republic Act No. 4586 did not simply ask the people of Batangas whether they wanted cityhood. It provided for the creation of Laurel City. The proposed city's territory would be exactly that of the Municipality of Batangas, and the city would retain its role as provincial capital, but its official name would be changed¹².

The law made the people's approval indispensable. Section 101 provided that the charter would take effect only if a majority of the voters of the Municipality of Batangas voted in favor of conversion in a plebiscite to be held on the day of the 1965 general elections¹³.

That plebiscite was held on November 9, 1965. Available election references report that 9,901 voters supported the proposal while 14,044 opposed it, a margin of 4,143 votes¹⁴. The proposal therefore failed, and Batangas remained a municipality.

Was the rejection specifically a rejection of the name “Laurel City?”

This is where the historical record requires some restraint. The fact that cityhood and renaming were placed in the same legislative proposition means that voters were not being offered a choice between “Batangas City” and remaining a municipality. A “yes” vote meant accepting both the conversion and the new name. Consequently, the result by itself cannot tell us whether voters opposed cityhood, the proposed name, or the combination of the two¹⁵.

There is, however, a strong local tradition that the name was the decisive issue. A later recollection identifies Batangas physician Dr. Godofredo Rosales as one of the prominent opponents of the proposed name and recalls a campaign centered on preserving the name Batangas. This tradition is intriguing, particularly because the subsequent 1969 charter restored the historic name, but the recollection is not, by itself, sufficient to establish the motives of the 1965 electorate as historical fact¹⁶.

There is another reason the name deserves attention. “Laurel” was not merely an arbitrary new name. It honored former President José P. Laurel, a native of Tanauan, Batangas, and father of Speaker José B. Laurel Jr., who was a powerful political figure during this period. The proposed name therefore carried considerable political and familial significance. Yet whether this symbolism generated opposition among Batangueños remains something that contemporary newspaper reports and other primary sources would need to establish conclusively.

The defeat of the Laurel City proposal did not end the movement for cityhood. Four years later, the effort returned to Congress — this time with the municipality's historic name intact.

Republic Act No. 5495, approved on June 21, 1969, was entitled “An Act Creating Batangas City.” Like the earlier legislation, it transformed the entire existing territorial jurisdiction of the Municipality of Batangas into a city. But unlike the 1965 charter, it retained the name Batangas¹⁷.

The new charter again explicitly provided that Batangas City would remain the capital of the province¹⁸. It also established the machinery of city government, including the offices and administrative structure necessary for the municipality's transition into a chartered city.

The successful movement was led locally by Mayor Pedro Tolentino, Vice Mayor Rustico Borbon and the municipal council. The City Government of Batangas itself has subsequently identified these officials as the principal local leaders responsible for achieving cityhood in 1969¹⁹.

The transition was completed in July. Presidential Proclamation No. 581 designated July 23, 1969, as the date for the formal organization of the government of Batangas City, making that date the beginning of the city's existence as an organized chartered city²⁰. Pedro Tolentino became its first city mayor.

Thus, Batangas' unusual path to cityhood was not simply a matter of having to wait until the municipality became sufficiently large or prosperous. There was no standardized national checklist of the kind later associated with cityhood requirements. Congress was capable of granting a city charter through special legislation, and it had already done precisely that for Batangas in 1965.

The irony is that the first successful legislative attempt failed not in Congress but at home. The people of Batangas were given the opportunity to become a city, but the city that Congress proposed was Laurel City. Whether the electorate rejected the proposal primarily because of the proposed name, or because of other considerations, remains a question deserving further examination in contemporary sources.

Four years later, however, the essential political formula had changed. The provincial capital would become a city, its historic identity would be preserved, and on July 23, 1969, Batangas finally ceased to be merely the capital municipality of Batangas Province. It became what it had almost become four years earlier — a city — but this time, it remained unmistakably Batangas.