29/06/2025
๐ฆ๐๐๐ ๐ข๐ ๐ง๐๐ ๐ช๐๐๐: ๐๐๐ง๐ฌ ๐ข๐ ๐ ๐๐ก๐๐๐
๐๐ญ๐ข๐ป๐ฐ๐ฏ:
๐๐ฏ ๐ข ๐ด๐ฉ๐ช๐ฆ๐ญ๐ฅ ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ฃ๐ข๐ต๐ต๐ญ๐ฆ๐ฅ: ๐๐ข๐ณ๐ต๐บ ๐ฑ๐ฆ๐ณ ๐ง๐ฆ๐ด๐ด, ๐๐ถ๐ญ๐ฆ๐ด ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐๐ป๐ถ๐ณ๐ฆ; ๐ฐ๐ฏ ๐ค๐ฉ๐ช๐ฆ๐ง ๐ข ๐ฑ๐ฆ๐ข๐ณ๐ญ ๐๐ณ๐จ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ต ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ค๐ข๐ด๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐ช๐ฏ ๐ข ๐ค๐ญ๐ข๐ฎ๐ด๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ญ๐ญ ๐๐ณ, ๐ฐ๐ฏ ๐ฃ๐ข๐ด๐ฆ ๐ข ๐ด๐ฆ๐ข-๐ญ๐ช๐ฐ๐ฏ ๐ข๐ด๐ด๐ถ๐ณ๐จ๐ฆ๐ข๐ฏ๐ต ๐๐ณ ๐ข๐ณ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐ธ๐ช๐ต๐ฉ ๐ข ๐ด๐ธ๐ฐ๐ณ๐ฅ.
The City of Manila (which celebrated its 454th founding anniversary last Tuesday) bears distinction as the first (and one of the few) cities in the Philippines to have received a grant of a coat of arms from the Spanish crown, awarded by King Felipe II (the namesake of the Philippines himself): It follows the design of the Kingโs own lesser coat of arms (i.e., the arms of Castile and Leon) except that it was parted per fess (divided horizontally into two upper and lower sections) instead of quartered, and the purple Lion rampant was modified into a chimeric hybrid of โhalf a lion and half a dolphin,โ colored silver (as not to violate the heraldic rule of tincture), armed with a sword and placed on a blue field, to denote the cityโs status as the capital of an overseas territory. The coat of arms was of such classic design and character that when the Americans took over following Spainโs cession of the Philippines to the United States in 1898, Gaillard Hunt, an expert in heraldry employed by the U.S. Department of State as a clerk and librarian, decided not just to retain it as the cityโs official seal in 1901, but also incorporate it as the inescutcheon of the coat of arms of the Philippines he was commissioned to design.
The City of Manila retained the same coat of arms (in the form of a seal from 1901 onwards) from when it was first granted in 1596 up until 1963, when newly-elected Mayor Antonio Villegas started to introduce a myriad of trailblazing innovations which sought to inject a nationalistic identity to the capital city: he changed his official title as the cityโs chief executive to โGatpunoโ (Honorable Chief), changed the name of the City Hall into โMaharniladโ (a portmanteau of โMaharlikaโ and โMayniladโ), and named the newly-constructed vehicular tunnel in front of it the โLagusniladโ (portmanteau of โLagusanโ and โMayniladโ). But perhaps the most trailblazing (and controversial) among these changes was the replacement of the cityโs historic coat of arms in 1965 with a new design, featuring the bamboo palisades of Rajah Sulaymanโs historic citadel at the mouth of the Pasig River, the symbol for the letter โKโ in the precolonial baybayin script (symbolizing Kalayaan or Liberty), the facades of Fort Santiago and San Agustin Church (the oldest civil and ecclesiastical structures in the city) representing the role of the church and the state, all surmounted at the crest by a star with fifteen points, representing the fifteen (now sixteen) arrabales or districts which comprise the city, and surrounded by the motto โTimbulan ng Laya at Diwang Dakilaโ (Beacon of Freedom and Noble Spirit).
After Villegas left office in 1971, his successor, Mayor Ramon Bagatsing, sought to restore the 1901 seal but Galo Ocampo, at that time technical adviser on heraldry to President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., had other ideas: seeking to strike a balance between preserving tradition and the need for a truly-Filipino symbol for the capital city, Ocampo created a modified version of the classic coat-of-arms with a few variations: the castle was altogether eliminated in favor of a clamshell and a pearl, to signify the cityโs historic moniker of โPearl of the Orientโ (first used by the Jesuit priest Juan Jose Delgado in his 1751 treatise Historia General de Filipinas, but popularized by Jose Rizal in his death poem), however, Ocampo compensated for it by modifying the shape of the shield to resemble the crenellated battlements of a castle, similar to the crenellations of the various bastions built to guard the historic walls of Intramuros. At the lower half, the lion/dolphin hybrid (variously called a sea-lion or a morse) was retained, but now colored gold instead of silver and depicted assurgeant, that is to say, rising from the waves. Adopted in 1972, it remains the official seal of the city up until this very day.
