Legazpi

The settlement began as a coastal village on the Albay Gulf named Sawangan, given a Franciscan mission chapel in 1587 and renamed in 1856 for Miguel López de Legazpi, the Spanish commander who founded Manila. Its sheltered harbour made it the trading outlet for the abaca and coconut country inland, and the town grew alongside the older settlement of Albay, which held the provincial government.

Mayon has written much of the city's history. The eruption of 1 February 1814 buried Cagsawa and the towns nearby and killed an estimated 2,000 people; later eruptions and the lahars that follow heavy rain have repeatedly buried farmland and cut roads. Typhoons have done the same from the other direction: Typhoon Reming in 2006 sent volcanic debris down the slopes and killed more than a thousand people in Albay, and flooding remains a recurring emergency.

Japanese forces came ashore at Legazpi on 12 December 1941, and the city saw fighting again when American troops landed in April 1945. Its present charter dates from 1959, the third time Legazpi had been made a city, and the older town of Albay is now its second centre. Since then it has grown into the administrative and commercial capital of Bicol: regional offices, universities, hospitals, a port and, from October 2021, the Bicol International Airport at Daraga, which replaced the older airfield in the city.

Life here is lived in the shadow of a volcano, and the culture reflects it. Mayon's name is bound up with the legend of Daragang Magayon, a beautiful young woman whose story ends with her burial and the rise of the mountain, and the province's Magayon Festival takes its name from her. The Ibalong Festival in August dramatises the older Bicol epic of Baltog, Handyong and Bantong, heroes who cleared the land of monsters, with masked and costumed dancers through the streets.

Catholicism is deeply rooted. The cathedral and the older churches of Albay and Daraga anchor a calendar of fiestas, Holy Week processions and the dawn masses of Advent, and family obligations, godparenthood and homecomings carry real weight. Bicolano identity also rests on food — the regional reputation for chilli and coconut milk is worn with pride — and on a certain practised composure about disaster: evacuation routines, early warnings and rebuilding are a normal part of civic life rather than a crisis each time.

The city is young and educated, with several universities drawing students from across the region, and the evening promenade along the boulevard, with the volcano across the water, is the social ritual everyone shares. Handicrafts from the province — abaca weaving, pili-nut sweets, basketry and pottery from nearby towns — are sold in the city's markets and shops.

The city of Legazpi had about 210,600 residents at the 2024 census, and works as the regional centre for Bicol: government offices, courts, hospitals, universities and the head offices of regional businesses are here, along with a port and a growing number of call centres. Beyond the built-up area the economy is agricultural — coconut, abaca, rice and vegetables — and fishing works the Albay Gulf.

The two halves of the city keep different rhythms. The port district is busy from early morning with the market, the terminals and commerce; Albay District runs on the school and office day and empties in the evening. Jeepneys and tricycles are the way almost everyone moves, and traffic thickens around the market and the malls at the end of the working day.

Weather and the volcano are constants. Schools double as evacuation centres, barangay officials keep lists of households in the danger zones, and after each storm or ashfall there is a well-practised routine of clearing, repairing and replanting. Tourism, which has grown steadily since the airport opened, gives work to drivers, guides and resorts, and many households also rely on money sent home by relatives working in Manila or abroad.

Legazpi eats Bicolano, which means gata and sili — coconut milk and chilli — in almost everything. Laing, dried taro leaves simmered slowly in coconut milk with shrimp paste or pork until dark and thick, is the regional standard. Pinangat, strongly associated with nearby Camalig, wraps fish, shrimp or minced pork in taro leaves and cooks the parcels in coconut milk with chilli. Bicol Express, pork stewed in coconut milk with a quantity of chilli that surprises visitors, took its name in Manila in the 1970s from the Bicol Express train that ran from the capital to Legazpi, and is now eaten across the country.

Fish and shellfish come from the Albay Gulf and the Lagonoy Gulf beyond it, and kinunot — flaked fish cooked with malunggay leaves and coconut milk — is a common home dish. Meals are rice-based and served all at once, with vinegar and chilli on the table, and the heat level in Bicol kitchens is genuinely higher than elsewhere in the Philippines.

The pili nut is the province's great speciality: grown mainly in Bicol, it is roasted salted, candied into brittle, baked into tarts and turned into a soft marzipan-like sweet, and shops around the city sell boxes of it to take home. Chilli-flavoured ice cream is the other local souvenir, half joke and half genuine. The public market is where all of this starts — sacks of chillies, coconuts split to order, bundles of taro leaves and fish landed that morning.