The history of Hispano-Filipino culture

The Philippines is the only former Spanish colony that does not have the Spanish language as its national language. One possible reason for this is a personal theory of mine – that while Latin America attracted Spanish settlers who eliminated most of the local tribes and replaced them with Spanish-speaking settlers, the geographical distance of the Philippines precluded any significant number of migrants from Spain.

During the early period of Spanish colonization, the rulers of the Philippines were actually the Spanish friars. During this period, the majority of Filipinos, then called indios, were actually banned from any formal education and were not allowed to learn the Spanish language.

A very recent book, “El Español en Filipinas: The History of the Spanish Language, the Academia Filipina, and Hispano-Filipino Culture, 1924-2024” by Gaspar A. Vibal (Vibal Foundation, 2025) writes about the history of the Spanish language and Spanish culture in the Philippines.

This book offers a deeply researched history that confronts the complex legacy of the Spanish language in Philippine society, tracing its decline, resilience and ongoing cultural significance over a full century.

In his introduction to the book, the author explains his motivation for writing the book: “I wrote this book as an eyewitness account of a living culture I uniquely experienced in the 1960s and 1970s. Although I do not have Spanish ancestry, I have always been intellectually intrigued by families of mixed Filipino and Spanish heritage, commonly known as Kastilas. This book is not just a distant history; it reflects the diverse experiences that have shaped my identity from a distinct and outsider perspective.”

For an overview of the book, it is divided into nine chapters: Of Spanish, the Principalia and the Clase Directora; Tending the Spanish Plain; Performing the Hispano-Filipino During the Edad de Oro; Two Spains at War in the Philippines; Arising out of the Ashes, Independent but Ruined; Pan-Hispanism and the Spanish Crusade; Biforcated Identities: the Kastila, Mestizo, Fil-Hispanico, and the Tisoy; “No Quiero Tirar La Toalla;” Academia Filipina in the Twenty-First Century.

The structure of the book is effective. Vibal organizes his narrative chronologically, but his chapters are themed in a way that highlights different dimensions of the experience: elite power structures, cultural performance identity and institutional perseverance, the story of the Academia and the Premio Zóbel.

Vibal draws attention to how Spanish was not merely imposed, but also actively cultivated by Filipino intellectuals, artists and communities. He shows how these communities navigated not only colonial politics, but also global upheavals – such as the Spanish Civil War – which reverberated in the Philippines, giving shape and form to Filipino-Hispano identity.

A compelling dimension of this well-researched work is the author’s discussion of identity. Vibal does not shy away from the messy realities of identity formation: he examines how “Fil-hispánico” identity evolved, the tensions within the mestizo class and how social stratification informed linguistic affiliation. His work also explores how institutions such as the Academia Filipina fought to keep Spanish alive, even as speakers dwindled.

In Chapter 7, the generational tension within the Fil-Hispanic community was especially felt by the younger generation who grew up in Spanish-speaking or strongly Hispanized families. These heirs of the Fil-Hispanic identity, in the late 19th century, were regarded by the masses as simply Kastila, a generic name that applied to both the peninsulares (natives of Spain) and insulares, those Philippine born. During the American occupation, Kastila was increasingly applied as an appellation for mestizos (creoles).

The author writes: “Increasingly, the 1950s and 1960s ushered in the globalization of US pop culture and values that highly influenced Filipino youth, which turned them away from their Hispanic identity toward a globalized American-inflected one… They started to spurn their maternal language and culture by afflecting Americanisms and modeling themselves after their popular American idols… When spoken to by their parents in Spanish, the new generation would reply back in phrases mixed with some Spanish, English or Filipino words… The Spanish interjection ‘coño’ was picked up by Filipinos to characterize a certain breed of upper or middle class college-education given to frequent utterances of this expression…”

Despite all dire predictions, Hispano-Philippine literature seems to have defied all the odds and still continues to survive. However, the survival of this is due to a large extent to the work of translators. For example, Jose Rizal’s novels were written in Spanish but their ideas of nationalism and progress have spread due to the novels’ translation into local languages and eventually, English.

The author’s passion for his subject is apparent, but it does not cloud his commitment to historical accuracy and what is described as “contextual sensitivity.” It is not a nostalgic elegy for a lost tongue but a significant historical narrative.

This book comes at a timely moment because 2025 marks the centenary of the “Academia Filipina de la Lengua Espanola.” According to the author, his book offers a renewed invitation to reflect on the place of Spanish in Filipino identity and memory.

*      *      *

Email: [email protected]