Tuesday, November 14, 2006 Tantingco: Magalang, Minalin, Porac--towns that moved By Robby Tantingco Peanut Gallery
LAHAR-STRICKEN residents of Bacolor, Porac and Mabalacat who moved to resettlement areas far from home are not the first Kapampangans to move en masse due to a natural calamity.
Old Magalang, established in 1605, was originally located in Macapsa, farther up north than its present site, but due to severe flooding caused by the Cuayan and Maisac Rivers, it was transferred to San Bartolome, which was dangerously close to the Parua River (Sacobia-Bamban River today).
The principales of old Magalang, namely the Cortez, Suing, Pineda and Luciano families, thought it best to relocate the town's other half to safer ground: thus, some families moved north of the Parua River to a place called Sto. Niño, which they renamed Concepcion; the other families remained in San Bartolome and retained their town's name as Magalang.
Heavy rains on September 22, 1856 made the town "look like a large lake". The flood caused the transfer (again) of the town farther south, to a place called San Pedro Talimundoc, which the evacuees renamed San Pedro de Magalang, although today residents have dropped San Pedro and retained San Bartolome as their patron saint.
Meanwhile, the old town of San Bartolome has come to be known as Balen Melacuan (Abandoned Town), and is now a mere barrio of Concepcion, Tarlac. Magalang's first church, built in 1725, lies buried in this barrio.
The Augustinian friar who supervised the exodus in 1856 was Fray Ramon Sarrionandia, OSA. The town was formally established on December 24, 1863 with 22-year-old Pablo Luciano y David as the first gobernadorcillo (mayor). Concepcion became independent of Magalang on August 1866.
Another Pampanga town that moved is Minalin, originally located in Macabebe and originally named Sta. Maria, in honor of the wives, all named Maria, of the town's four founders, namely, Mendiola, Nucum, Lopez and Intal, who had negotiated the piece of land from a local datu.
In 1683, when it was time for the Augustinians to build a church in Sta. Maria, the people of an adjacent settlement called Burol (hilly place) pleaded with the friars to build the church in their place instead of the low-lying Sta. Maria. That same year, nature decided the matter when a big flood inundated Sta. Maria and carried the logs intended for the church construction downstream, right on the riverbanks in Burol. The residents took it as a heavenly sign, built the church on the spot and named the place Minalis, meaning, "moved to." A succeeding gobernadorcillo, Don Diego Tolentino, misspelled it as Minalin and the error stuck.
Despite its elevation, the Minalin church was flooded up to its main altar in 1834. The situation was even worse in the 1990s, when lahar carpeted the patio and forced unsightly renovations on the beautiful edifice.
If floods forced Magalang and Minalin to change locations, it was lack of water that made Porac move.
Porac used to be located on the slopes of a mountain called Batiauan. Dumandan, a nephew of Prince Balagtas (the Tagalog-Kapampangan sovereign of the Madjapahit Empire who arrived from Java in 1380 to organize the first settlements in Luzon), is credited as the founder of this prehistoric Porac. By the time the Spaniards came in 1571, the descendants of Dumandan had been forced out or buried by the pre-1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo; the ancient communities unearthed by recent archaeological excavations in Porac are probably the remains of these prehistoric settlements.
The Augustinians established the Spanish-era Porac in 1594 by organizing the Aetas of various rancherias in the area. Barely three years later, in 1597, the missionaries abandoned the place due either to a lack of priests or to fear of Zambal headhunters. In succeeding years, Porac was administered from Bacolor and then from Lubao.
On Sept. 16, 1867, due to drought-like conditions on the mountain slopes, the town transferred to its present site, called Capatagan (plain). It was near a river called Porac, from which the town probably borrowed its name (the river had been named after a local plant named curag, purag or purac).
