The Spanish Era has a large role in the Philippine history. They have affected the Philippines very much in terms of culture, architecture, beliefs, and most especially, our religion.
They have built the early churches here in the Philippines and have spread the Catholicism throughout the whole country using their power, therefore, I think that the churches is their greatest structures that they contributed in the Philippines, especially the four UNESCO world heritage site which are the Paoay church in Ilocos, the San Agustin church in Manila, the Miag-ao church in Bicol, and the Sta. Maria church also in Ilocos. I have been in those four churches and my favorite is the Paoay church – its buttresses, the moment I went down the vehicle, my eyes were immediately drawn to its buttresses even though at that time I didn’t know what it was called – I only had hstarc1 at the time. The least is the Miag-ao Church, it’s probably just because it was already painted white and I liked the old picture that I saw somewhere in the internet.
The materials they used in building the structures are much more advanced than before, and i just realized that while other countries especially in Europe are already having structures near the modern period, it was just the beginning of having structures at all in the Philippines.
http://www.librarylink.org.ph/featarticle.asp?articleid=110
Another structure that I liked in the Spanish era is the bahay na bato. Only families with a high status could have a bahay na bato, of course it was because they are the one who can afford it, but there’s one thing in the bahay na bato that could indicate the social status of the family and it was the newel post. Their planning is very logical and is still applied in the present day, only called differently. They had the Caida, equivalent to today’s Foyer, the Cuarto, today’s Bedroom, the Cusina, today, kitchen, and many more but what intrigued me was their Banyo, now called the Comfort Room. They have to build it outside the house for sanitary, they didn’t have yet the plumbing system so they have to make the most out of what they got. I also liked how they keep their houses cool without the help of air-conditioning unlike today. They were already smart enough at that time to know about the passive cooling effect. At the houses we visited last year in Vigan, they have this huge fan on the ceiling and it function like the present day’s electric fan, I’ve seen one exactly like that in a restaurant in Subic, it was a Spanish inspired restaurant, the name is Magellan’s, it was also somewhat like a museum, and they uses the large fan to cool the place though it was open area, I was amazed at those fan and was always looking at them whenever we were there. Amazing how they used those simple technologies and making it very much effective. Everything back then was just so simple and environmentally friendly, but, everything back then was also very much controlled by the Spanish.
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