BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE. Wonderful sites. Exquisite cuisine. Year-round festivities.
Pampanga makes the compleat tourist destination. So sells Central Luzon’s top tourism marketeer Ronnie Tiotuico, director of the Department of Tourism, of the region’s premier province.
Why, just last week, Tiotuico said, the City of San Fernando held – to great fanfare – the sixth edition of Pyestang Tugak, a festival dedicated to frogs, a delicacy in the province.
As noted by a local columnist, “From pamate-danup (stop-gap to hunger), the lowly frog has found center place in the Kapampangan culinary culture with such delights as betute (stuffed frogs), tinola (broth of frog with green papaya and pepper leaves), among others.
Though centered on the culinary, the frog festival comprised other activities like frog-costumed street-dancing and free-dance competitions, frog-mascot contests, frog races and the lundag-tugak show-jumping, a “frog chorale” contest where participants performed any song they wished but had to replace the lyrics with croaks of “kokak.”
A regular feature in the fest, paduasan tugak, catching frogs with rod and line held at the wet grasslands behind the Heroes Hall. The winner determined by the largest frog caught.
Contemporaneous with San Fernando’s homage to the frog is Angeles City’s month-long Fiestang Kuliat, anchored on the city’s twin fiesta: La Naval, in commemoration of the Spanish fleet’s victory over the Dutch in the 18th century, on the second Sunday of October; and Apu, the feast of the Santo Entierro , on the last Friday of October.
The fiestas have not lost any of their religiosity even as they have assumed unto their celebrations purely “sosyal” dimensions: like running-for-a-cause, motorshows, the Mutya ning Angeles search, and Kundiman, the traditional grand ballroom affair of the city’s literati and glitterati.
Tigtigan, Terakan
keng Dalan
In the last weekend of October, Angelenos let it all hang out with mardi-gras-like Tigtigan, Terakan king Dalan, literally street partying, jamming, dancing, eating, drinking. The best bands in the country congregate for two nights in Angeles City dishing out the best of rock and roll, pop, country, reggae, even OPM.
Started by then-Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan in 1992 to revive the despairing spirits of the Angelenos in the wake of the twin whammies of the American pull-out of Clark Air Base and the utter devastation the Mount Pinatubo eruptions wrought upon the city, Tigtigan… comes back with a vengeance – with greater intensity and expanse – this year with the return of its originator, Pamintuan, to city hall.
Like in the rest of the country, November opens in Pampanga somberly with All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, the people trooping to the cemeteries to pray for and pay respect to their departed loved ones.
Sinukwan Festival
Unrolling on the first weekend of December, is Pampanga’s signature festival – Sinukwan, in honor of the mythic king of Mount Arayat.
Competitions in costumed street-dancing, parade of floats from the province’s 20 towns and two cities, and the search for the Lakan at Mutya ning Sinukwan consist the activities centered in the City of San Fernando
Closely following the festival is the Aldo ning Kapampangan celebrations culminating on December 11, the founding date of Pampanga as the first province of Luzon in 1571.
Food and agricultural fairs, culinary contests, the Mutya ning Kapampangan pageant, and the annual proclamation of the Most Outstanding Kapampangan Awards in various fields of endeavor encompass Pampanga Day.
Duman Festival
The advent of the Christmas season has a distint smell in the province of Pampanga, particularly in the town of Sta. Rita – duman, of the malagkit rice variety harvested only in the cool air of November.
Fragrant, golden-green hued, duman is usually served with hot tsokolateng batirul or fresh carabao milk. It can also be fried or made into kalame or the local rice cake.
The Sta. Rita folk, only a few years back, made duman as the centerpiece of the town’s signature festival. Immediately before the start of the misa de gallo, the town holds its own spectacle of stage performances by the local performing arts group, ArtiSta Rita, food galore – with duman as principal ingredient.
Giant Lantern Festival
The single event that heralded the City of San Fernando being the “Christmas capital of the Philippines,” Ligligan Parul, in the local language is a kaleidoscope of sights and sounds – thousands of lights in gigantic lanterns, measuring from 14-20 feet in diameter, dance to Christmas tunes performed by individual bands.
As early as March every year the designs of the lanterns are already made, and house-to-house collections in the barangay undertaken to fund their construction which is a most-kept secret until the very night of the festival, usually the Saturday before Christmas.
Competition is spirited, with the winning lantern becoming the pride and joy of the barangay for the whole year. The entries are usually taken to other areas, including Metro Manila, to share the joy their performances bring.
Aguman Sanduk
The Fellowship of the Ladle in English, Aguman Sanduk in the town of Minalin is an anachronism in the macho culture of the Kapampangan.
Starting 2:00 in the afternoon of New Year’s Day, the menfolk don their womenfolk dresses, wear lipstick and make-up and parade through town in drag at the end of which the Aguman Queen is proclaimed and provided with a pot for prize and a wooden ladle as scepter.
No one can pinpoint the exact origins of the cross-dressing festival, believed to have begun in 1934. The closest explanation is that it was meant to imbibe in the men, if only for a day, the virtues of womanhood – an early attempt at gender-sensitivity.
Kuraldal Festival
On the 6th of January, Pampanga’s own version of the fertility festival in Obando, Bulacan is held in Sasmuan town’s Kuraldal.
At the end of the 8:00 p.m. High Mass usually concelebrated by the archbishop and other priests, brass bands signal the start of all-night swaying, jumping, dancing festivities around the image of the town’s patron, St. Lucy, in procession snaking through the narrow streets of the poblacion.
It is believed – as in the Obando rites – that barren women who participate in the festivities invariably get pregnant.
The festivities end whence they started – at the parish church – to the song “Santa Lucia.”
Ibon-Ebun Festival
The wetlands of Candaba, home of migratory birds and principal provider of duck eggs to the balut industry of Pateros, come to life from October with the arrival of the winged migrants from various points of cold Asia, along with thousands of birdwatchers from here and abroad.
It is on February 6-7 though that such event gets its due celebration with the Ibon-Ebun Festival initiated by Mayor Jerry Pelayo less than five years ago.
Street-dance competitions with performers costumed as birds, exhibits and trade fairs, a flying competition for kites – in the shape of birds, duck-racing and a river regatta are some of the festival events.
Caragan Festival
The town of Mabalacat pays tribute to its first and only king, the Aeta Caragan, who was said to have taken a local lass named Laureana Tolentino for her queen, with an eponymous festival.
On the third weekend of February, unats make like their kulot brethren – blackening their skin, donning loinclothes and other outlandish costumes from organic matter like banana leaves, vines and ropes and parade through the town’s major thoroughfare, singing and dancing to native songs.
Hot Air Balloon Festival
International flair comes to Pampanga festivals through the Philippine International Hot Air Baloon Fiesta held in the second week of February.
Balloonists from around the word swoop down on Clark and do early morning flights around the vast reaches abutting at the Porac-Zambales mountain ranges competing for precision flying, as well as savoring in the breath-taking view.
Other activities of the festival include parachute jumps, ultra-light flying, sky diving and aerial shows by what remains of the Philippine Air Force planes.
Maleldo
Even such solemn observance as the Holy Week – maleldo in Kapampangan – finds cause for festive celebration in Pampanga.
In the morning of Good Friday itself, to the click and whirr of tourists’ cameras and VCRs, flagellants by the hundreds move around the City of San Fernando, sprinkling the road as well as passersby with droplets of their blood drawn from thei wounds by continuous whipping of their backs earlier scratched by a brush bristled with broken bottles.
At noontime, penitents make their way bearing their own crosses and take turns being actually nailed on them at a makeshift Golgotha in Barangay Cutud.
The spectacle is preceded by a passion play participated in by the barrio folk dressed in the costumes of the day.
Sabuaga Festiva
l
The gloom of Good Friday ends in the joy of Easter Sunday, especially with its unique celebration in Sto. Tomas town.
The most beautiful local maidens dressed in ther fineries accompany the images of the Risen Christ and the Virgin Mother around the poblacion, singing and raining petals on them.
At noon, the effigy of Judas Iscariot is burned and blown to pieces with pyrotechnics, the loudest bang reserved for the head.
Last year, the Sabuaga Festival was added to the festivities. Taking after the Easter practice of showering (sabuag) the images with flowers (sampaga) the festival is participated in by contingents from the seven barangays of the town with costumes inspired by their local products – coffins, pottery, jeepney bodyworks, etc. dancing through the streets and showering everyone with confetti and petals.
Apung Iru Fluvial Festival
The province would not be worth its name – pampang, meaning riverbank – without a river festival.
Every June 27-29, the feast day of St. Peter is celebrated in Apalit town with fluvial festivals, participated in by hundreds of merrymakers in colorful bancas reveling up and down the Pampanga River.
From its shrine in Barangay Capalangan, the image of St. Peter is borne by pagoda through the tributaries of the mighty river before it is brought to the parish church where it stays for veneration until the last day of the celebrations .
Thence, the image is brought back to its shrine in another colorful fluvial procession through the same route.
The aforementioned festivals are but the “larger events” in Pampanga’s annual calendar of festivities. There are scores of others waiting to be discovered by the intrepid tourists in the far-flung barangays of the province.
“Any week of the year, somewhere in Pampanga, an event is happening. As anywhere in Pampanga, a site is worth seeing,” Director Tiotuico says.
Pampanga makes the compleat tourist destination. So sells Central Luzon’s top tourism marketeer Ronnie Tiotuico, director of the Department of Tourism, of the region’s premier province.
Why, just last week, Tiotuico said, the City of San Fernando held – to great fanfare – the sixth edition of Pyestang Tugak, a festival dedicated to frogs, a delicacy in the province.
As noted by a local columnist, “From pamate-danup (stop-gap to hunger), the lowly frog has found center place in the Kapampangan culinary culture with such delights as betute (stuffed frogs), tinola (broth of frog with green papaya and pepper leaves), among others.
Though centered on the culinary, the frog festival comprised other activities like frog-costumed street-dancing and free-dance competitions, frog-mascot contests, frog races and the lundag-tugak show-jumping, a “frog chorale” contest where participants performed any song they wished but had to replace the lyrics with croaks of “kokak.”
A regular feature in the fest, paduasan tugak, catching frogs with rod and line held at the wet grasslands behind the Heroes Hall. The winner determined by the largest frog caught.
Contemporaneous with San Fernando’s homage to the frog is Angeles City’s month-long Fiestang Kuliat, anchored on the city’s twin fiesta: La Naval, in commemoration of the Spanish fleet’s victory over the Dutch in the 18th century, on the second Sunday of October; and Apu, the feast of the Santo Entierro , on the last Friday of October.
The fiestas have not lost any of their religiosity even as they have assumed unto their celebrations purely “sosyal” dimensions: like running-for-a-cause, motorshows, the Mutya ning Angeles search, and Kundiman, the traditional grand ballroom affair of the city’s literati and glitterati.
Tigtigan, Terakan
keng Dalan
In the last weekend of October, Angelenos let it all hang out with mardi-gras-like Tigtigan, Terakan king Dalan, literally street partying, jamming, dancing, eating, drinking. The best bands in the country congregate for two nights in Angeles City dishing out the best of rock and roll, pop, country, reggae, even OPM.
Started by then-Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan in 1992 to revive the despairing spirits of the Angelenos in the wake of the twin whammies of the American pull-out of Clark Air Base and the utter devastation the Mount Pinatubo eruptions wrought upon the city, Tigtigan… comes back with a vengeance – with greater intensity and expanse – this year with the return of its originator, Pamintuan, to city hall.
Like in the rest of the country, November opens in Pampanga somberly with All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, the people trooping to the cemeteries to pray for and pay respect to their departed loved ones.
Sinukwan Festival
Unrolling on the first weekend of December, is Pampanga’s signature festival – Sinukwan, in honor of the mythic king of Mount Arayat.
Competitions in costumed street-dancing, parade of floats from the province’s 20 towns and two cities, and the search for the Lakan at Mutya ning Sinukwan consist the activities centered in the City of San Fernando
Closely following the festival is the Aldo ning Kapampangan celebrations culminating on December 11, the founding date of Pampanga as the first province of Luzon in 1571.
Food and agricultural fairs, culinary contests, the Mutya ning Kapampangan pageant, and the annual proclamation of the Most Outstanding Kapampangan Awards in various fields of endeavor encompass Pampanga Day.
Duman Festival
The advent of the Christmas season has a distint smell in the province of Pampanga, particularly in the town of Sta. Rita – duman, of the malagkit rice variety harvested only in the cool air of November.
Fragrant, golden-green hued, duman is usually served with hot tsokolateng batirul or fresh carabao milk. It can also be fried or made into kalame or the local rice cake.
The Sta. Rita folk, only a few years back, made duman as the centerpiece of the town’s signature festival. Immediately before the start of the misa de gallo, the town holds its own spectacle of stage performances by the local performing arts group, ArtiSta Rita, food galore – with duman as principal ingredient.
Giant Lantern Festival
The single event that heralded the City of San Fernando being the “Christmas capital of the Philippines,” Ligligan Parul, in the local language is a kaleidoscope of sights and sounds – thousands of lights in gigantic lanterns, measuring from 14-20 feet in diameter, dance to Christmas tunes performed by individual bands.
As early as March every year the designs of the lanterns are already made, and house-to-house collections in the barangay undertaken to fund their construction which is a most-kept secret until the very night of the festival, usually the Saturday before Christmas.
Competition is spirited, with the winning lantern becoming the pride and joy of the barangay for the whole year. The entries are usually taken to other areas, including Metro Manila, to share the joy their performances bring.
Aguman Sanduk
The Fellowship of the Ladle in English, Aguman Sanduk in the town of Minalin is an anachronism in the macho culture of the Kapampangan.
Starting 2:00 in the afternoon of New Year’s Day, the menfolk don their womenfolk dresses, wear lipstick and make-up and parade through town in drag at the end of which the Aguman Queen is proclaimed and provided with a pot for prize and a wooden ladle as scepter.
No one can pinpoint the exact origins of the cross-dressing festival, believed to have begun in 1934. The closest explanation is that it was meant to imbibe in the men, if only for a day, the virtues of womanhood – an early attempt at gender-sensitivity.
Kuraldal Festival
On the 6th of January, Pampanga’s own version of the fertility festival in Obando, Bulacan is held in Sasmuan town’s Kuraldal.
At the end of the 8:00 p.m. High Mass usually concelebrated by the archbishop and other priests, brass bands signal the start of all-night swaying, jumping, dancing festivities around the image of the town’s patron, St. Lucy, in procession snaking through the narrow streets of the poblacion.
It is believed – as in the Obando rites – that barren women who participate in the festivities invariably get pregnant.
The festivities end whence they started – at the parish church – to the song “Santa Lucia.”
Ibon-Ebun Festival
The wetlands of Candaba, home of migratory birds and principal provider of duck eggs to the balut industry of Pateros, come to life from October with the arrival of the winged migrants from various points of cold Asia, along with thousands of birdwatchers from here and abroad.
It is on February 6-7 though that such event gets its due celebration with the Ibon-Ebun Festival initiated by Mayor Jerry Pelayo less than five years ago.
Street-dance competitions with performers costumed as birds, exhibits and trade fairs, a flying competition for kites – in the shape of birds, duck-racing and a river regatta are some of the festival events.
Caragan Festival
The town of Mabalacat pays tribute to its first and only king, the Aeta Caragan, who was said to have taken a local lass named Laureana Tolentino for her queen, with an eponymous festival.
On the third weekend of February, unats make like their kulot brethren – blackening their skin, donning loinclothes and other outlandish costumes from organic matter like banana leaves, vines and ropes and parade through the town’s major thoroughfare, singing and dancing to native songs.
Hot Air Balloon Festival
International flair comes to Pampanga festivals through the Philippine International Hot Air Baloon Fiesta held in the second week of February.
Balloonists from around the word swoop down on Clark and do early morning flights around the vast reaches abutting at the Porac-Zambales mountain ranges competing for precision flying, as well as savoring in the breath-taking view.
Other activities of the festival include parachute jumps, ultra-light flying, sky diving and aerial shows by what remains of the Philippine Air Force planes.
Maleldo
Even such solemn observance as the Holy Week – maleldo in Kapampangan – finds cause for festive celebration in Pampanga.
In the morning of Good Friday itself, to the click and whirr of tourists’ cameras and VCRs, flagellants by the hundreds move around the City of San Fernando, sprinkling the road as well as passersby with droplets of their blood drawn from thei wounds by continuous whipping of their backs earlier scratched by a brush bristled with broken bottles.
At noontime, penitents make their way bearing their own crosses and take turns being actually nailed on them at a makeshift Golgotha in Barangay Cutud.
The spectacle is preceded by a passion play participated in by the barrio folk dressed in the costumes of the day.
Sabuaga Festiva
l
The gloom of Good Friday ends in the joy of Easter Sunday, especially with its unique celebration in Sto. Tomas town.
The most beautiful local maidens dressed in ther fineries accompany the images of the Risen Christ and the Virgin Mother around the poblacion, singing and raining petals on them.
At noon, the effigy of Judas Iscariot is burned and blown to pieces with pyrotechnics, the loudest bang reserved for the head.
Last year, the Sabuaga Festival was added to the festivities. Taking after the Easter practice of showering (sabuag) the images with flowers (sampaga) the festival is participated in by contingents from the seven barangays of the town with costumes inspired by their local products – coffins, pottery, jeepney bodyworks, etc. dancing through the streets and showering everyone with confetti and petals.
Apung Iru Fluvial Festival
The province would not be worth its name – pampang, meaning riverbank – without a river festival.
Every June 27-29, the feast day of St. Peter is celebrated in Apalit town with fluvial festivals, participated in by hundreds of merrymakers in colorful bancas reveling up and down the Pampanga River.
From its shrine in Barangay Capalangan, the image of St. Peter is borne by pagoda through the tributaries of the mighty river before it is brought to the parish church where it stays for veneration until the last day of the celebrations .
Thence, the image is brought back to its shrine in another colorful fluvial procession through the same route.
The aforementioned festivals are but the “larger events” in Pampanga’s annual calendar of festivities. There are scores of others waiting to be discovered by the intrepid tourists in the far-flung barangays of the province.
“Any week of the year, somewhere in Pampanga, an event is happening. As anywhere in Pampanga, a site is worth seeing,” Director Tiotuico says.
