Burgos, officially the Municipality of Burgos (; ; ), is a 4th class municipality in the province of Pangasinan, Philippines. According to the 2020 census, it has a population of 23,749 people.
On the western part of Pangasinan, along the coast of the China Sea lies a town called - Burgos, perched on a broad plateau.
Burgos was founded as an independent town in 1830 by the early Ilocanos from Paoay, Ilocos Norte headed by Don Matias Guiang. As the settlement grew thickly populated and extensive, Don Matias Guiang led a petition to the Governor of Zambales to create a new town out of the settlement. The request was granted and the new town was named San Isidro which was finally renamed Burgos, after the Filipino martyr priest who was executed during the Spanish regime.
The town of Burgos was ceded to the Province of Pangasinan by virtue of Act No. 1004 dated November 30, 1903 of the Philippine Commission.
Etymology
Burgos was originally named San Isidro in honor of its patron saint, Isidore the Laborer. Since there was another locality named San Isidro along Lingayen Gulf, the residents added "Potot " to the town's name. This term is an Ilocano adjective meaning "clipped", "cut-off" or "disconnected", referring to the Amburayan River which during dry season doesn't have continuous water. This stream, therefore, is discontinued and disconnected during summer months. Confusion however continued and persisted as mail for San Isidro de Potot was erroneously sent to the town of San Isidro Labrador and those of the latter to the former town.
To resolve the confusion, Mayor Don Anacleto Ruiz changed the town's name to Burgos in 1913, in memory of Filipino martyr Padre José Apolonio Burgos, one of the Gomburza Catholic priests who were executed at the Bagumbayan Field in Manila on February 17, 1872.
History
Spanish colonial era
In the first part of the 19th century, Matías Guiang, a mighty sailor-explorer from the town of Paoay, Ilocos Norte, regularly traveled the China Sea between the Ilocos and Zambales regions for the purpose of trade. Attracted to its agricultural possibilities, Matías Guiang along with his family, friends and neighbors eventually migrated to Zambales del Norte, now the westernmost part of the province of Pangasinan. They disembarked at the mouth of the Agno River by tracing it.
They found a settlement in the eastern part of the present town proper. The provincial government of Zambales has not ignored the ever increasing population of San Isidro and as it saw the necessity of a government to oversee the village. Don Matías Guiang made history, as quoted from the Philippine Archives, when on May 15, 1830, the Spanish Governor of Iba, Zambales issued a decree creating the settlement into a pueblo and appointed Don Matías Guiang, who was then the most wealthy and influential land owner of the place, as the first gobernadorcillo of the town. San Isidro de Potot was its incorporated name in honor of Saint Isidore the Laborer, whom the settlers had adopted, loved and revered as their patron saint.
Philippine Revolution
In the late 19th century, the gobernadorcillo was Don Tomás Braga, and the parish priest of the town during the revolution was Mariano Torrente, a native of Barcelona, Spain. The town was a prosperous community of farming and ranching, but the atmosphere was already seething with dissidence; winds of rebellion disturbed the people.
Twenty Spanish cazadores had their cuartel or barracks in the big house of Don Gaspar Ruiz. Cazadores literally means "hunters" their aim was to hunt the Filipino outlaws or dissidents. Across the plaza from the cuartel was a big convent, made out of adobe stones, 24 meters long and 12 meters wide, and two stories high. Across the plaza from the convent was the tribunal or municipal hall, this tribunal was made out of stones, ten meters high. A tower was being constructed at the town plaza between the convent and the tribunal. This tower or fort was made of stones, 5 meters square inside dimensions, 3 stories high, and its walls are 1/2 meter thick.
As insurgency was becoming widespread; the Spaniards adopted measures that increased the number of outlaws. In Northern Zambales (now Western Pangasinan), the leader of the insurgency was Roman Manalang whose headquarters was in a hideout somewhere in Alaminos, while in San Isidro, the captain of the outlaws was Juanso Viado. The outlaws or dissidents, while numerous, had very few defective guns, and mostly armed with crude sabers, sharp spears and long bolos.