Correcting the story of Davao’s founding couple todd sales l

March holds a special place in every Dabawenyo’s heart. For many years, March 16 was celebrated as Araw ng Dabaw. In 2019, however, Republic Act No. 11379 moved the official founding anniversary of Davao City to March 1. In recent local observances, March 16 has instead been marked as Araw ng Pasasalamat, a day of thanksgiving concluding the Araw ng Dabaw celebrations. As Davao commemorates yet another anniversary, it’s worth revisiting the story of its founder, Jose Oyanguren, and his wife, Luisa Azaola. Like many women in history, her story has often been overshadowed by legend, including the persistent claim she was merely Oyanguren’s “lady love” whom he married only on his deathbed.

This belief arose from a misunderstanding of Oyanguren’s burial record. During the Spanish period, parish records were usually written not by friars but by local scribes (escribanos) who followed standard templates and often omitted punctuation. In Oyanguren’s burial entry, what should read “the cadaver Don Jose Oyanguren, an adult Spaniard, married to Doña Luisa Azaola, the day before” appears without punctuation. In such records, references to time or day refer to the time of death. Thus the phrase “mismoeldia antes ala una y media” indicates the time of death, not a marriage, though later readers misinterpreted it as a deathbed wedding.

Later writers reinforced this romantic narrative. In “Conquest in the Name of Love”, Antonio V. Figueroa recounted a tradition that Maria Luisa Azaola and her brother Antonio were Spanish orphans living in Sigaboy when she met Oyanguren, and that the two lived together because he already had a wife in Spain. Figueroa repeated the claim in “History of Davao – Oyanguren and Magsaysay”, stating that Oyanguren married her on his deathbed. Writer Aida Rivera-Ford echoed the same view, and over time this account became the widely-accepted story.

The documentary record, however, tells a very different story. To begin with, historians have been mistaken about Luisa’s name. Oyanguren’s wife was never Maria Luisa Azaola but Luisa Florencia González de Azaola y de los Reyes, though she later shortened her name to Luisa Azaola. Even records of San Pedro Cathedral refer to her simply as Luisa Azaola. Genealogical research clarifies her background further. According to the compiled Azaola family genealogy preserved by Gonzalo Velasco Berenguer, Luisa Azaola was born on June 19, 1824, in Binondo, Manila, the daughter of Iñigo González de Azaola, a peninsular Spaniard from Burgos, and Maria de los Dolores de los Reyes y Monterroso. Her father held several important posts in the colonial administration connected with the Real Audiencia of Manila and other government offices. The claim that Luisa was the daughter of a captain general is therefore incorrect. Moreover, since her father died only in 1850, she couldn’t have been an orphan when she met Oyanguren. Earlier suggestions that she had a brother named Antonio have also been disproven. The Azaola family tree shows she had no brothers but four sisters, and no documentary evidence has been found for Antonio’s existence, suggesting he was likely a product of family legend.

The most decisive correction concerns the marriage itself. Contrary to the deathbed story, Jose Oyanguren and Luisa Azaola had already married years earlier on September 5, 1843, in Intramuros, Manila. After Oyanguren’s death in 1858, Luisa returned to Manila and later married Jose Maria Gonzalez y Brenes in 1861, with whom she had four children.

Luisa died in Manila in a1900 at 76. Through her descendants she later became connected to several prominent Filipino families, including the Pardo de Tavera, Cojuangco, Marcos, and Romulo families.

Revisiting Luisa Azaola’s life reminds us that history can easily be shaped by misread documents and repeated assumptions. Careful examination of the records dispels the legend of a deathbed marriage, revealing instead a documented union that had taken place 15 years earlier --and a life that deserves to be remembered through evidence rather than myth.