10 Shocking Facts You Didn't Know About Jaro/Iloilo City

Since I can't post 10 pages long of Jaro's History, I'm gonna list instead 10 shocking facts you (or I) didn't know about Jaro/Iloilo City:

1. The Jaro Plaza is about 500 years old, tracing its origin back in the 1500s when the Spaniards first settled in Panay. It was standard practice of the Spanish government to establish a plaza because it was an effective instrument in bringing the natives closer to Catholicism and achieving administrative control over the people.
2. Father Jose Burgos once visited Jaro in October 10, 1867, as a proxy for the Archbishop of Manila, to attend the formal ceremony of Jaro becoming a diocese as decreed in the Papal Bull (Qui ab initio) signed by Pope Pius IX.
3. By 19th Century, Iloilo was then known as the "Textile Center of the Philippines" reaching one million dollars worth of handicraft weaved exports of hablon and patadyong to Manila and other foreign countries.
4. Also during the 19th Century, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank became the first banking institution in Iloilo and the first outside of Manila.
5. In 1897, Queen Regent Maria Cristina of Spain awarded Iloilo City the title "The Queen's City" for helping the Spanish military in the initial defeat of Aguinaldo's forces in Cavite, as well as the fall of Silang and Imus, which is a a misnomer to contrary belief that Iloilo was the most prosperous city outside Metro Manila before Cebu snatched the title. When in fact, this is a title that perpetually shames us Ilonggos.
6. In 1935, the Province of Iloilo boasted 400 kilometers of first class and 111 kilometers of second and third class roads and had the largest network of fully repaired and constructed first and second class roads outside Manila during that time. (Lol and after 75 years, what happened?)
7. During the 1930s, Iloilo Transportation Co. had double deck steel blue buses "with radio music", as advertised (lol), covering the areas of Jaro, what was then the City Proper, Molo, Mandurriao and Arevalo. (How cool is that? We were like London during that period.)
8. Angelicum School of Iloilo was then the famous and elegant Lizares Mansion built in 1937 by Don Emiliano Lizares, one of the sugar plantation tycoons (others being the Lopezes and Hechanovas) of the 1930s.
9. Also of the same year on July 16, Iloilo was inaugurated as a city enacted by Commonwealth Act No. 57. But it was still years after that Jaro was added as an official and the last district of the city after Leganes and Pavia achieved independence from what was then the Municipality of Jaro.
10. February 20, 1981, Pope John Paul II visited and crowned the Nuestra Sra. de la Candelaria at the balcony of the Jaro Metropolitan Cathedral--the only Marian image and religious icon in the Philippines ever to be visited by a Pope.

Lol I'm not quite so sure if these shocked you but it did to me, which later saddened me actually. Because I never realized how great, prosperous, culturally diverse and cumulative Jaro or Iloilo City, in general, was. Although doing research on Jaro's history as part of our SS104 holiday homework was literally a pain in the ass, I definitely learned a lot and in fact inspired me to become more nationalistic and appreciative of my hometown.

I hope our local government would do something to revive Iloilo City's legendary past as a city of prosperity, burgeon and ideal bureaucratic system.