History of the Spanish Language in the Philippines

"Prior to the Spanish colonization of the Philippines in 1565, there are no written records of the islands that make up the modern day Philippines."3 In the year 1565, Miguel López de Legazpi, the Conquistador travelled from Spain and founded the first Spanish settlement in the country, firstly on the island of Cebú. They occupied the kingdoms of Tondo and Manila, establishing it as the capital of the Spanish East Indies. "The Philippines were originally named after King Philip II of Spain- Las Islas Felipinas".4The Philippines were part of Spanish territory for hundreds of years from this year on. It was firstly ruled from Mexico City but was later ruled from Madrid. The Spanish language was imposed as an official language. The Philippines were under Spanish Rule for just over 300 years. However Jim Lipski states that “despite the lengthy Spanish presence in the Philippines, the Spanish language never became firmly implanted among Speakers of Indigenous language as occurred in Latin America...”4

The Augustinians and the Franciscan monks arrived after Legazpi had settled and started setting up schools. Education was extremely important to them. The children were taught in their indigenous languages which the monks embraced. However Spanish was spoken by those who had settled in the Philippines and was noted and invariably picked up by the natives. Spanish was not formally introduced to the school system until the 19th century. In 1863, Queen Isabella II of Spain decreed the establishment of a free public school system. The system used Spanish as the language of instruction as well as teaching the language as a compulsory subject. The amount of schools which were set up under the Spanish Rule was impressive; this led to the high level of education that children received in the country. This led to an educated class known as the Ilustrados; these were native-born Philippine poets, writers and intellectuals who wrote in Spanish and sought more reform from the