Queen Sofia gets royal welcome at UST

MANILA, Philippines - Queen Sofia of Spain, who concluded her state visit to the Philippines yesterday, described her visit as wonderful and a good experience.

“I had a wonderful time. Very wonderful people, so friendly. Really it’s been a big experience for me,” she said in an interview with local cable news channel GNN.

Wearing a beige-colored blouse and skirt, the 73-year-old Queen of Spain smiled and waved back to the crowd of high school and college students of the University of Santo Tomas (UST) yesterday morning.

UST-Office of Public Affairs director Associate Professor Giovanna Fontanilla said that the queen “was glad with the warm reception of the Thomasian community.”

Even when students and media workers broke through the security arranged by the Presidential Security Group (PSG) and school security guards in order to get a closer photograph of her, the Queen was unfazed.

She kept a smile on her face and waved to the crowd.

Professor Fontanilla believed that, “For her (Queen) it was okay. She is a queen with a kind heart and she wanted to be with the people... You can really sense that. (There was an instance when) we gesture to her to come and she finds time to stop. She stops to talk to people.”

Yesterday was not the first time that Queen Sofia visited UST and her presence reinforced the ties of the school to Spain that once colonized the Philippines. UST carries the title “royal university.”

In honor of her visit, UST installed a marker in the main building.

The marker partly read, “In the spirit of an enduring educational and cultural heritage shared between the University and Spain.”

She added that her visit to the school was significant especially since UST recently celebrated its 400 years and just launched its neo-centennial.

The Queen, accompanied by the rector Fr. Herminio Dagohoy, joined the wreath-laying ceremony at the Miguel de Benavides Statue. Benavides was the third archbishop of Manila and founded UST.

She also visited the UST Library, particularly the archives that store important documents of the university, such as those dating back to the Spanish era.

She also met with the Dominican priests, Spanish Dominican fathers, college deans and some of the administrators and officers of the Circulo Hispano Thomasino.

Textiles tour

Before she left the country, the queen, who is a dedicated patroness of the arts, was also given a guided tour of the country’s rich textile gallery at the National Museum.

Sen. Loren Legarda gave a personal tour where she elaborated on the different traditional textiles, locally grown materials, textile production techniques, and various influences on the Filipino textile industry.

“The fusion of Spanish and Filipino culture is evident in many pieces in the textile galleries. My grandmother’s ensemble for instance,” Legarda said, referring to a black Filipiniana, “was made with abaca through the process called pinukpok or pounded, which softens fibers with a mortar and pestle to produce a silk-like finish.

“The design is obviously influenced by Spain, but the material is indigenous,” she added.

The Queen’s peek at Philippine indigenous culture included an actual demonstration of how traditional textiles are woven using a back strap loom by male and female Ifugao weavers and a performance of the Hudhud or harvest chant. 

As they went around the exhibition, Legarda shared with the Queen stories behind some of the notable items in the galleries—the banton burial cloth, the oldest textile found in the Philippines; items from the National Museum’s textile collection, such as the Abel Iloko from Vigan, Tinguian blanket from Abra, Gaddang garments from Ifugao, textiles from Polomok, South Cotabato and Maranao garments from Southern Mindanao; weaving looms, some of which were loaned by the senator, and photos of indigenous people wearing traditional garments hanging on the museum walls.

The textile galleries are housed in two halls of the National Museum, one of which is the Queen Sofia Hall – named after her in honor of the royal visit in 2003.

Legarda, chairperson of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and Cultural Communities, said that the expanding scope of Filipino-Spanish relations “is very much evident, that is why we are happy that the Senate has recently concurred in the ratification of the Convention on Social Security between the Philippines and Spain.”

The bilateral relations between the two countries began in 2003 when Sen. Edgardo Angara authored Republic Act 9187 or the Philippine-Spanish Friendship Day.

Since RA 9187 was enacted in 2003, a total of nine bilateral economic and cultural agreements and an estimated P9.2 billion in investments have been made between the two countries.

The law has also sponsored the intensive Spanish language training of public school teachers following the reintroduction of Spanish as an elective in high school in 2009.

“I want to make sure that the Philippine-Spanish relations will never again wane and decline,” Angara said.

He and his son Aurora Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara also authored the National Cultural Heritage Act of 2009, which established the Sentro Rizal or the Philippine’s version of Instituto Cervantes.

In 2011, Spain’s Congreso de los Diputados passed a momentous parliamentary declaration expressing Spain’s gratitude to the Philippines for recognizing the two nations’ enduring friendship.

Earlier this year, Spain’s Senado also passed an institutional declaration thanking the Philippines for the Philippine-Spanish Friendship Day on June 30.

Among the notable developments between the two countries since the Philippine-Spanish Friendship Day was celebrated were the donation of 1.245 million euros by Spain’s Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarollo (AECID); nine bilateral agreements on economic and cultural cooperation, including an accord earmarking an initial P9.2 billion worth of investments and grants in the areas of energy, IT, agriculture and fisheries was signed shortly after the state visit of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to Spain in 2007; the Department of Education (DepEd) reintroduced Spanish into the high school curriculum under the Special Program in Foreign Languages through an agreement signed between then Secretary Jesli Lapus and Professor D. Virgilio Zapatero Gomez, president of the University of Alcala; almost 100 public school teachers enrolled in intensive Spanish language training at the Instituto Cervantes, a project made possible by the AECID; and Sentro Rizal branches were opened in Madrid and Prague. – With Christina Mendez, Marvin Sy