The
nature of Spanish colonization
The talk,
with which the UP College of Architecture had honored me to participate on the inauguration on the on-line exhibit on the
Spanish influence in Philippine architecture, takes us to that period from 1565
to 1898 when the Philippines belonged to the Spanish Monarchy. If you notice, I
am not saying that the Philippines was a colony
of Spain, or that the Philippines belonged to Spain. They are important
nuances, in whose etymology we find reasons that will help us understand many
things when we talk about architecture. Take note also that the title is not “The
Spanish Architecture’s influence on Philippine Architecture”. This aspect is of
capital importance, because, as we will see, the influence is basically
conceptual rather than formal.
The Spain of today is
not the Spain of the 16th, 17th, 18th or 19th centuries. I would say that
today’s Spain is one of the inheriting states of what was once the Spanish
Monarchy Empire, together with the republics of Latin America and the
Philippines.
As Spain, France,
Portugal, Italy, Romania, and the different territories of southern Europe,
western Asia and North Africa share the heritage of the Roman Empire, as well
the kingdom of Spain and the aforementioned republics share the heritage of the
Spanish monarchy. In the same way that nobody would take a toll on the current
Italian people or government for the positive or negative aspects of the Roman Empire,
nobody should blame or praise the nowadays Spain regarding what happen during Spanish
Monarchy Empire.
The fundamental
difference between the colonizing action of the Spanish Monarchy Empire (and
the Roman Empire) compared to that of the British Empire is that the former
advocated integration meanwhile that of the latter was essentially
discriminatory and segregationist. For example: Three men born in Hispania came
to occupy the imperial throne in Rome. The Spaniards mixed their blood in the
Americas, promoting miscegenation, which produced great figures like Garcilaso
de la Vega, both Castilian and Inca, one of the best writers in Spanish
language in the Renaissance. On the contrary in the Anglo-Saxon colonies they
created indigenous reserves.
The Romans had reached
territories whose societies were much less structured than the Roman one. They developed
in them a civilizing action whose imprint is still palpable, in monuments, in their
legal systems, and in other cultural and social manifestations. We can say something similar about the American and
Philippine territories colonized by the Spaniards.
Just as Spaniards
merged with the indigenous peoples of the Americas and the Philippines, their
cultures also fused together, giving rise to new ethnic, social and cultural
realities. It was very different what happened with the British colonization of
North America or Australia, or with the one of other European countries such as
the Netherlands. The Spanish philosopher Julián Marías made the point perfectly
about the difference with a botanical simile. “The British transplanted their
society and culture to overseas territories; the Spaniards grafted them.”
The Castilians brought
in their cultural DNA features of the Greco-Roman and Muslim cultures. The
latter as a fruit of eight centuries of Arab and especially Berber presence in
the Iberian Peninsula. But they came to the Philippines through the viceroyalty
of New Spain (current Mexico). Let’s not forget that Legazpi was the Mayor of
Mexico City when he embarked for the Philippines from the port of Navidad
(today in the state of Jalisco). So, they brought also with them some features
of the Novohispanic culture. Different ingredients were brought by the
Spaniards to the islands to merge with the existing pre-Hispanic ones.
*
The first consequences
of the Spanish presence in the archipelago, regarding architecture, are urban planning and stone construction. As it is well known, Legazpi founded the Spanish
Manila (450 years ago right the past month) on the Maynilad settlement, ruled then
by Rajah Sulayman. He did it by following the specifications of the Laws of the
Indies. Under this body of
regulations hundreds of cities were created in the Americas. From then on the
urban form of Intramuros has remained almost intact all these centuries in the Manila
plan.
Regarding construction
in stone, we do not have any evidence –at least none that I know of– that the
people who inhabited the islands used stone in their constructions, as did
other Pacific people, such as the Chamorro in the Marianas. As it is well
known, it was father Antonio Sedeño, one of the first Jesuits to arrive in the
archipelago, who began to exploit the quarries of Guadalupe and Meycauayan and also
to instruct the locals about how to carve stone.
The constructions of
the first Manila, made of wood and thatch, were easy to burn. As we know from
the chronicles, at least two large fires ravaged the city in those early times;
one was a consequence of the invasion of the Chinese pirate Limahong (1574),
and the other one was originated by the flame of a candle from the burial mound
of Governor Ronquillo (1584). Stone was a safe material against the risk of
fires. We know from the chronicles, that Manila was reconstructed and flourishing
with stone buildings. So, we may wonder: Were they buildings built in the
Spanish way?
Intangible
influences
Here it would be
interesting to stop and ask what is a building built in the Spanish way, or
what are the features that identify a building as Spanish. A question that we
cannot possibly answer simply and categorically: From what era, from what
region, what type? The architect and historian Fernando Chueca tried to answer
this question in his Invariantes castizos
de la arquitectura española (Authentic
Invariants of Spanish Architecture). In this study, which is already a
classic, there is not much talk about the materials that are associated with
Spanish architecture, as clichés, such as tile curves, arches, grills or white
plasters. Moreover, what it is done is to identify nonmaterial features related
to spatial and structural composition.
So, we can make the
exercise of testing whether those invariants of Spanish Architecture are found
in Filipino Architecture. Let’s try first with the square proportion. According
to Chueca if comparing the Spanish architecture with the ones of other European
countries we can conclude that buildings in Spain trend to be less slender than
in other European countries. Therefore, façades are usually more in the square
than in the rectangular scheme. The reason of that feature could be found in
the Muslim tradition in which the square form is the origin of any patterned
composition. We find the same feature in the Fil-Hispanic architecture,
although we might wonder whether this is because of an aesthetical
sensitiveness or moreover as a consequence of the adaptation of the buildings
to the earthquake hazards. In any case a substantial percentage of Filipino
churches façades can be inscribed in an almost square pattern, which I have
come to define as the 3 x 3 pattern. We can follow a similar reasoning regarding
domes, which are as scarce in Spanish as in FilHispanic architecture.
However there are other
features as the space fluency that we don’t find in the Philippines. Or in
other sense we cannot say that in the Spanish architecture the octagonal shape
is as present as it is in The Philippines.
But let’s continue with
the discussion about whether the Filipino buildings at the end of 16th century
were influenced by Spanish Architecture. And the best way is to look at an
example of these buildings in order to answer the question: the only one that
remains from that time, the oldest construction in the entire country: San
Agustín church. Can we find similarities of San Agustín with some Spanish
temple? Yes and no. Yes in the typology, but not so much in the formal aspects.
It has been said that San Agustín follows the model of the Augustinian church
of Puebla (Mexico). It has its logic: the Augustinians were great builders,
first in the New Spain and later in the Philippines. Those Augustinian friars
came directly from the New Spain. Many of them were already been born there,
and they had never set foot in Spain.
If we analyze the plan
of San Agustín, we can see that it follows the typological model in fashion at
that time throughout the Christianity: the Church of Il Gesu in Rome by
Vignola, the architectural type that prevailed to host the new liturgy emanated
from the Council of Trent, that of the Counter-Reformation. And the secret of
its survival yields precisely in this typological choice. You must have read
that its resilience to earthquakes is due to a foundation in the form of an
inverted dome, or you must have read that the fact that San Agustín has
withstood all the earthquakes suffered by Manila, while all the other buildings
collapsed, was due to a miraculous cause. Perhaps it was the Santo Niño,
guarded by the Augustinians in Cebu, who worked the miracles. Don’t pay too
much attention to those theories, it has a much more rational explanation, its layout:
the lateral chapels between buttresses brace the central nave and give a great
rigidity to the whole edifice: pure anti-seismic design avant la lettre. But at the same time, Il Gesu of Rome follows the
model of a temple, this time genuinely Spanish: the church of San Juan de los
Reyes convent, in Toledo.
Therefore, we see that
the emblem of Philippine architecture at the turn of the 16th to the 17th
century follows the guidelines of the classical Greco-Roman architecture (facade,
pilasters, nave, dome, etc.) the specific type that was born in Toledo, which
through Renaissance Rome is projected throughout Christendom, and arrived in
Manila from the New Spain.
But here in Manila we
come across with an unskilled labor force, who is going to interpret the models
in a particular way. And also this architecture encounters the Chinese factor:
the Sangleys who will be fundamental in the entire history of Philippine
architecture. They are going to introduce their own sensitiveness. These
factors created a peculiar formal vocabulary, in a way different to the
buildings we find in Spain from that time.
As it has been said many
times, the Philippine architecture is a synthesis architecture, in which the Spanish
factor acted as a vehicle or a catalyst, causing and allowing the setting of
components (ingredients) of very different origin, with the result of a very
unique architecture.
The Spanish factor is
part of the Filipino identity, just as Greco-Roman and Arabic-Berber factors formed
part of the Spanish one. Architecture, like any other manifestation of the
culture of a people, is in turn a manifestation of its identity. It is
therefore inevitable that Spanish architecture has influenced Philippine
architecture. However, this influence must be understood in a vehicular key in
the same way that the Spanish language was the vehicle for the development of a
Filipino literature.
*
Tangible
influences
Now it
would be interesting to analyze how this influence, of ontological character (identity)
and therefore abstract, is manifested or not in concrete aspects. For this task,
the best way might be to take a typological tour through the different types of
architectural structures that have survived to this day in the Philippines.
Churches:
they are the most characteristic elements of the Spanish-Filipino heritage and
perhaps, for this reason, we could think that it is where we are most clearly
going to find these influences. The Philippine churches, as it is well known,
constitute in a very high percentage the embryo of Philippine towns and cities.
In fact, the Fil-Hispanic church (simbahan),
more than an isolated body, is an articulated set of buildings and spaces: the
atrium, the church proper and the convent. It follows the model that had begun
to develop in the central decades of the 16th century in New Spain: the
objective of this architecture was to create a frame to evangelize the natives.
One or two friars per locality were in charge of this mission. With so few
troops, it is understandable that, instead of teaching Spanish to the natives
to evangelize them, they learned their languages. They wrote the first vernacular
languages grammars and dictionaries helping in this way to fix them and to
preserve them.
In Spain the origin of
churches, even the conventual ones, was very different. Monasteries and
convents were built to host religious communities in an already Christianized
territory.
On the other hand, the
conditions of the natural environment in the Philippines are very different
from those of Spain, where a tropical climate like that of the Philippines is
not found in any of its regions, nor a seismicity as marked as that of the
islands. For this reason, the Spanish-Filipino architecture cannot formally
resemble much the architectures of the different Spanish regions.
From the typological
point of view, there is a spatial element the cloister, which is fundamental in
conventual architecture in Spain, and in the whole Europe. We rarely find cloisters
in Spanish-Filipino architecture.
Eventually we might say
that the Philippine ecclesial complex is an adaptation of the early New
Hispanic one, which in turn is a projection of Spanish models adapted to its
reality.
Residential architecture. Seismicity was logically a fundamental factor in the
development of Fil-Hispanic architecture, which has its greatest model in
residential architecture. Following a trial and error process over the years,
decades and even centuries, the ancestral houses of the mid-late 19th century
are a magnificent and highly refined example of architecture adapted to its
environment. The bahay na bato
perfectly embodies the botanical simile by Julián Marías above mentioned.
Starting from the bahay kubo pattern,
new elements and concepts are introduced upon it as grafted elements. For
instance the ground floor stone walls.
Other typical elements
of Fil-Hispanic architecture are the capiz windows, which enclosures the upper
floors. They have nothing to do with the enclosures in Spanish architecture:
the sliding panels whose structure is a wooden lattice filled with shells, have
an evident formal kinship with the shoji
enclosure panels from Japan or Korea, with the substantial improvement that
capiz on paper supposes. Capiz
windows are also found in Goa, former Portuguese colony in India. Scholars are
now in the debate whether they were taken from West to East or the other way
around. Anyhow the capiz panel is
something purely Filipino: what comes from Spain is the concept of enclosed
space, not the form, which comes, presumably from Japan. So a concept brought
from Spain, the enclosed space is the vehicle for the arrival of other foreign
influences to create something purely Filipino.
The bahay na bato has managed to preserve through
the years the features of the bahay kubo
that make it so suitable to the physical environment: earthquake resistance and
adaptation to the climate. The bahay na bato are boxes-like that can be
opened laterally, inviting the refreshing breezes, carriers of comfort to come
in.
Unlike the current buildings, non-practicable glass
boxes, tropical (infernal) greenhouses in which comfort can only be achieved by
consuming enormous amounts of energy, contributing to the destruction of the
planet. Unfortunately, the
repertoire of the Fil-Hispanic architecture has not been very much appreciated
during the longest part of XXth century, when International or Modern style was
ruling all over the world. This repertoire offers timeless lessons to the
architects as those related o space and light the two essential ingredients of
Architecture.
In that process trial
and error mentioned above, it is interesting to notice how the bahay na bato managed to regain the
seismic stability that the bahay kubo
always had. These ones, supported on their legs, danced when earthquakes, as
Fernando Zialcita tells us poetically in some of his rehearsals. Stone does not
work well when earthquakes occur. We know that the first generation of stone
buildings collapsed during Manila 1645 earthquake. Constructors of bahay na bato learned that with an
adequate distribution of masses their buildings would resist the shakes: heavy masses
at the lower part and light masses at the upper ones. In spite of their weight,
tiles, so associated with Spanish, and also Chinese, architectures, continued
to be used until the last decades of the Spanish presence in the archipelago.
After de 1880 earthquake the use of a new construction material then, corrugate
iron, was prescribed instead of tiles for roofing.
This and other
prescriptions and regulations were gathered in which is probably one of the
first ordinances for seismic stability in history: Reglas
para la edificación en Manila, dictadas a consecuencia de los terremotos de los
días 18 y 20 de julio. Neither in Japan nor in the USA we have found a comprehensive
regulation as early as this one about the matter. This proves the high level of
modernity that the urban Philippines had reached in the 19th century.
Watchtowers and lighthouses. We have seen that Fil-Hispanic religious and
domestic architecture do not formally resemble very much to the Spanish ones.
We are going to see now some examples where formal similarities are much more
visible. That is probably because the nature of these structures is rather
engineering than architectural type: fortresses and lighthouses.
There are some unique
elements that highlighted –some are still highlighting– the coasts of Spain and
the Philippines. I mean watchtowers and lighthouses. The first ones from the
seventeenth century, perhaps earlier, and the last ones from the middle of the
nineteenth. The construction of watchtowers was necessary on the Spanish
Mediterranean coasts to prevent and deal with attacks by Berber-Muslim pirates
from North Africa. In the same way, these towers were built on the coasts of
Visayas and Luzon to watch the arrival of Muslim pirates from Mindanao, Jolo or
Borneo who ravaged with their raids the coastal populations of the
Christianized islands.
Philippine coastal
watchtowers have very different shapes; not all of them have resemblance with
the Spanish ones. Some of these watchtowers were at the same time churches
belltowers. But if we go to Ilocos coast we will find structures the look very
Spanish. I mean those conical shaped watchtowers as in San Esteban, Santiago or
Sulvec. We find similar structures not only in other watchtowers in the
Mediterranean coasts but also in windmills in La Mancha or Murcia.
Regarding lighthouses, a
plan was developed in order to mark the coasts of the territories that were
part of the Spanish kingdom, with no distinction between the mainland and the
overseas territories. The coasts of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines had
the same consideration than the Cantabrian, Atlantic and Mediterranean
peninsular coasts, as well as those of the Balearic and Canary Islands. So we
find very similar structures dating from the same time either in Spanish or
Philippine coasts.
Intramuros has the best-preserved bastioned perimeter of the
Hispanic world, only after Cartagena de Indias in Colombia. Bastioned
architecture constitutes the first example of globalized architecture (or
engineering) in history. From Ibiza to Manila, passing through Africa and
America, the cities of the Spanish and Portuguese empires present a big
homogeneity in their wall systems. Sentry boxes, bulkwarks, ravelins,
cavaliers, gates… in different continents have a big formal resemblance.
The checkerboard layout
and the bastioned fortifications, which enclosed them, are compositional
elements, or construction, common to Latin America and the Philippines,
belonging to an order that extends throughout the world, as will also happen in
the 19th century with the eclectic architecture and later with the International
style.
Conclusions
- - The
Spanish influence in Philippine architecture is obvious since the architecture
is the manifestation of one nation culture and identity, and the Spanish
ingredient is a substantial part of Philippine culture and identity (Nick Joaquin)
- The
influence of Spain in Philippine architecture is rather conceptual than formal.
- The
Spanish presence in the Philippines was the vehicle for the creation of a new
and unique culture by grafting inside the local reality concepts and principles
and by allowing other cultures as the Chinese being actors in this process of
becoming.
