Philippine Literature in Spanish

Philippine literature in Spanish (Spanish: Literatura Filipina en Castellano) is a body of literature made by Filipino writers in the Spanish language. Today, this corpus is the third largest in the whole corpus of Philippine literature (Philippine Literature in Filipino being the first, followed by Philippine literature in English). It is slightly larger than the Philippine literature in the vernacular languages. However, because of the very few additions to it in the past 30 years, it is expected that the former will soon overtake its rank.

According to Mariñas (1974) Philippine Literature in Spanish can be divided into 5 stages of development namely:

The arrival of the Spaniards in 1565 brought Spanish culture and language editors. The Spanish conquerors, governing from Mexico for the crown of Spain, established a strict class system that imposed Roman Catholicism on the native population. Augustinian and Franciscan missionaries, accompanied by Spanish soldiers, soon spread Christianity from island to island. Their mission was implemented by the forced relocation of indigenous peoples during this time, as the uprooted natives turned to the foreign, structured religion as the new center of their lives. The priests and friars preached in local languages and employed indigenous peoples as translators, creating a bilingual class known as ladinos.

The natives, called "indios", generally were not taught Spanish, but the bilingual individuals, notably poet-translator Gaspar Aquino de Belén, produced devotional poetry written in the Roman script in the Tagalog language. Pasyon, begun by Aquino de Belen, is a narrative of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which has circulated in many versions. Later, the Mexican ballads of chivalry, the corrido, provided a model for secular literature. Verse narratives, or komedya, were performed in the regional languages for the illiterate majority. They were also written in the Roman alphabet in the principal languages and widely circulated.

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