Iloilo City

The Spanish moved their Panay settlement to the mouth of the Iloilo River in the 1600s, fortifying it against raids from the southern seas. For two centuries it remained a modest port in a province known for weaving: Iloilo's hand-loomed textiles, including cloth of pineapple and abaca fibre, supplied the colony and gave the area the name of the textile capital of the Philippines.

Everything changed when the port was opened to foreign trade in 1855. The British vice-consul Nicholas Loney promoted sugar cultivation on Negros across the strait and financed mills and shipping, while cheap imported cloth ruined the weaving trade. Sugar money built the warehouses along the river, the commercial arcades of Calle Real, and the mansions of Jaro. Iloilo became the second city of the colony and was given the title La Muy Leal y Noble Ciudad. In 1898 the revolution reached Panay; Spanish forces made their last formal surrender in the islands at Plaza Libertad in December of that year.

The 20th century was harder. The sugar trade moved its centre to Bacolod and Manila, the port declined, a long dock strike and labour unrest in the 1950s drove business away, and Iloilo slipped into decades as a provincial city living on its past. Its districts — Jaro, Molo, La Paz, Mandurriao and Arevalo, each once a town of its own — were merged into the city in 1937. Revival came late: the old airport closed in 2007 and its land became the Mandurriao business district, the river was cleaned and lined with an esplanade, and the city has grown again on outsourcing, education, retail and conventions while restoring parts of its heritage core.

Iloilo is the heartland of Hiligaynon, or Ilonggo, a language whose gentle cadence is a national stereotype and a local point of pride. Ilonggos are thought of as soft-spoken, courteous and slow to confront, and conversation works by hint and politeness rather than bluntness; the same mildness carries into an unhurried city manner that surprises visitors arriving from Cebu or Manila.

The religious calendar is the cultural one. Dinagyang, held on the fourth weekend of January, honours the Santo Niño with drummed street dancing by contingents in tribal-style costume, performing at judging points around the city centre, and it draws crowds from across the country. The Jaro fiesta in early February, centred on the image of Our Lady of the Candles in the cathedral, fills the district with processions, a fair and open houses. The paraw regatta sends traditional sailing outriggers with coloured sails across the strait, reviving a boat-building tradition older than the city.

Heritage is taken seriously here. The old houses of Jaro and Molo, Calle Real's arcades, and the province's coral-stone churches have their own preservation campaigns, and the sugar-era families remain socially prominent. The city has a long-established Chinese-mestizo community, strongest historically in Molo, whose influence shows in business, surnames and food. Universities give the centre a student population, and basketball, karaoke, choirs and beauty pageants fill the social calendar the church does not.

About 474,000 people live in the city itself, with a larger metropolitan area spreading into the neighbouring towns of Iloilo province. The economy rests on government and services, the port, retail and malls, several large universities and hospitals, and a substantial business-process outsourcing sector whose night-shift workers keep parts of Mandurriao awake at unusual hours. Remittances from Ilonggos working abroad support many households, and agriculture and fishing continue in the surrounding province.

The day starts early. The Esplanade and the plazas fill with walkers, runners and cyclists at first light, markets are busiest by seven, and the schools and universities set the traffic rhythm twice a day. Heat flattens the middle of the day; the evening brings the malls, the food strips and the riverside benches. Sunday Mass and family meals structure the week, and fiestas structure the year.

Cycling has a visible place here that is rare in Philippine cities, helped by lanes along the main roads and the flat terrain. The city's own concerns are familiar ones: traffic and flooding after heavy rain in the low-lying districts, pressure on the river and its mangroves, the cost of housing near the new district, and whether the old buildings of Calle Real and the ancestral houses can be kept as the downtown redevelops.

Iloilo has a reputation for food that outruns its size, and in 2023 it became the country's first Unesco Creative City of Gastronomy. La paz batchoy, created in the La Paz district, is the emblem: fine egg noodles in a broth of pork and offal, topped with crushed chicharon, garlic, spring onion and sometimes a raw egg, eaten at market counters at any hour. Pancit molo, from the Molo district, is not a noodle dish at all but a clear chicken soup of pork-filled wontons. KBL — kadios, baboy, langka — is a sour stew of pigeon peas, pork and unripe jackfruit, and chicken inasal, grilled over coals after a marinade of calamansi, vinegar, pepper and annatto, is eaten here as much as in Bacolod across the water.

Seafood defines the coast: oysters from the mangrove flats, grilled squid and fish, and shellfish sold along the Arevalo shore. Guimaras mangoes, prized across the country, come over on the morning boats, and the markets sell them beside dried fish, coconut and the vegetables of Panay's interior.

Sweets and merienda are a serious business. Biscocho, twice-baked bread brushed with butter and sugar, and barquillos, rolled wafer sticks, are the standard gifts taken home from the city; butterscotch bars, piaya and muscovado sweets come from the same bakeries. Pinasugbo, banana fried in caramelised sugar, and the ube and coconut sweets of the markets round it out, with fresh calamansi juice and buko, young coconut, to drink in the heat.