A journey to the City of Alaminos from Manila is a visual delight of lush green rice fields, a right mix of old and modern houses picture-framed by the foothills of Zambales Mountains and the blue waters of China Sea.
It is also a trip down memory lane as magnificent and centuries-old churches and plazas adorned the towns and cities that evoke a historic past and reflect a lasting legacy of Spanish colonization and influence in the Philippines.
Talk of Pangasinan and immediately, four famous places in the province are mentioned: Dagupan for its delectable ‘bangus’ (milkfish); Lingayen for its historic place in the Lingayen Gulf Landings of Gen. Douglas MacArthur who liberated Northern Luzon from Japanese forces at the close of World War II; Manaoag for its miraculous shrine of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary; and, Alaminos City.
Pangasinan is famous for the Hundred Islands National Park. This is a marine park located off the coast of Alaminos City in the Lingayen Gulf and is composed of some 123 islands, most of which are quite small and uninhabited.
The City of Alaminos has grown to be the trade, commercial, cultural and educational center of Western Pangasinan but more popularly known across the world being the home of the Hundred Islands located in the northern reaches of the Philippines.
Its birth all began as a tiny village by the China Sea carved by settlers from the nearby province of Zambales in the early years of Spanish rule. As the little community grew, other families from Dagupan joined the original settlers. It was later recognized as a barrio of the town of Bolinao. After three re-locations, a chaotic episode and the settling of internal conflicts between mixed ethnic inhabitants, the cluster of villages close to the world-renowned Hundred Islands was made a town only a few years before the Philippine Revolution of 1898 erupted.
Soon after its top tourist attraction, the Hundred Islands, was declared by Commonwealth President Manuel L. Quezon as a national park, it served as the melting pot in Western Pangasinan drawing people from all walks of life – local tourists and foreigners alike – aside from being the commercial hub of that part of the province.
Capitalizing on its strategic location with the presence of the world-famous Hundred Islands National Park, and endowed with abundant natural wealth, Alaminos proved to be one of the few ‘boom’ towns in the Ilocos region. Entrepreneurs and traders were attracted like ants to honey. In recent years, investments propelled an economic boom.
With a booming economy reflected in leaps in local government revenues, Alaminos was upgraded from fourth to third class town in July 1991, the only one in the province and one of the five towns in the Ilocos Region to earn that score. Six years later, with continuous economic growth, Alaminos, got upgraded into a first class municipality.
The idea of converting it into a city was first broached by Mayor Alipio F. Fernandez Jr. in 1994 when he was chief executive of Dagupan City to spur the town’s economic growth. In July 1997, Mayor Rivera convened the Municipal Council led by the then Vice Mayor Eduardo F. Fontelera in the first official move to convert the booming town into a city. The town legislature threw overwhelming support to the city-hood proposal.
Rep. Hernani A. Braganza, then neophyte congressman representing the First District of Pangasinan in the 10th Congress, supported the local government initiative and filed House Bill No. 10275 in Congress. Unfortunately, the bill was not passed after it was overtaken by the 1998 national elections.
In the 11th Congress, incumbent Congressman Braganza filed House Bill No. 4898, on October 21, 1998. At that time, the aspiring city had reached all the minimum requirements of population density and annual income to meet the minimum qualifications of a town to be made a component city of its mother province.
Public hearings were called, the last one on October 21, 1991 at the Don Leopoldo Sison Auditorium in Alaminos where a huge crowd gathered whether in favor or against the cityhood movement.
And the rest is history. House Bill No. 4898 was approved by the House of Representatives during its third and final reading in December the same year. In February 8, 2001, House Bill No. 4898 and Senate Bill No. 2257 were consolidated into one version and passed into law by both Chambers of Congress.
Subsequently Republic Act 9025, an Act Converting the Municipality of Alaminos, Province of Pangasinan into a Component City to be known as the City of Alaminos was signed into law by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on March 5, 2001, at the Kalayaan Hall in Malacañang.
The law took force on March 28, 2001 shortly after more than 85% of Alaminians voted a resounding “Yes” in a plebiscite making Alaminos as the fourth city in the Province of Pangasinan.
Alaminos.gov.ph
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