“ABOVE ALL, a city needs a soul.” Famous words of the Blessed John Paul II. And what makes a city’s soul but its faith-based culture and tradition?
Mayor Pamintuan sparked a cultural renaissance in the city with the revival of longlost festivals and practices like the serenata, the las flores de los angeles, the lubenas for Christmas, the Crissotan, the polosa, among others, and the celebration of the arts in the monthly music-painting-photography fusion dubbed Art at the Park on the grounds of the Museo ning Angeles.
On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Mount Pinatubo eruptions, the city government commissioned the publication of Agyu Tamu: Turning Tragedy into Triumph celebrating the indomitable spirit of the people of Angeles.
The defining festival of the city – Tigtigan, Terakan king Dalan – that which sounded the call for the Angelenos to rise from the ashes of the volcanic eruptions and soar – phoenix-like – to the firmament of development, that which was reduced to insignifi cance by the previous administration with its insipid “street party” perversions of it, came back with a vengeance with the return of Pamintuan – breaking records in attendance and cash fl ows to fund more socio-cultural projects for the city.
(From Man of the Year cover story, Punto! Jan. 5, 2012) HAVING SET a culture of transparency, accountability and good governance at city hall, Mayor Edgardo D. Pamintuan, with his keen sense of history, is determined to regain the soul of his beloved city, sustaining, aye, intensifying the other cultural revolution he launched upon assuming the mayorship in 2010 as cited in the reprint above.
This, most manifest in the Plaza Anghel at the core of the city’s heritage district virtually serving as al fresco center for the performing arts, gallery, native food court, and public promenade rolled into one.
Then, there is the Estacion de Angeles, the decrepit old train station being repurposed as centrepiece of a pocket park. The structure scrubbed and poised to be refurbished, its immediate surrounding planted to trees balled out of the Pandan Road, as well as to ornamentals, and a vegetable garden.
With the roundabout being constructed at Clark’s Bayanihan Park shall rise thereabouts too a cultural complex comprising a contemporary art area, a giant sundial, an amphitheatre, the Mt. Pinatubo Museum, a bonsai garden, the “Pamana Walk,” a multipurpose hall and a food center.
From Sin City to Scene City, Angeles is certainly turning out to be. Fittingly the haven of the culturati and the literati, that its natives have been historically.
