SANDUGO FESTIVAL
July 01-31
Tagbilaran City, Bohol
A festival commemorating the blood-sealed peace treaty between Rajah Sikatuna and Miguel Lopez de Legazpi marking the beginning of the Spanish colonization of the Philippines.
Spanish colonization of the Philippines began with a blood-sealed peace treaty on the shores of Bohol. This historic event is remembered today with an all-out fiesta at the island's capital city. Check out the Sandugo street dancing parade on the 22nd, featuring ten colorfully dressed groups dancing to the beat of drums. There's also a traditional Filipino carnival, a martial arts festival and a Miss Bohol Sandugo Beauty Pageant, among dozens of other exciting activities.
That historic event took place on an unpretentious coast of Bohol, now a district of Tagbilaran, on March 16, 1565, a day after Miguel Lopez de Legaspi and his crew of conquistadors on four ships were drifted into the shores of Bohol during the course of their trip to the province of Butuan from Camiguin Island because of strong southwest monsoon winds and low tide. On that day, March 16, 1565, Captain General Miguel Lopez de Legaspi, the conquistador from Zumaraga, Spain, with Fray Andres de Urdaneta and some of his crew set foot on land for an audience with the local chieftain Sikatuna. The two bands of different nationalities, race and creed met at a murky place, a few hundred meters away from the beach, and after a few pleasantries, the Basque seafarer and the native chieftain of Bohol sealed off and strengthened their newborn friendship in a historic Blood Compact.
In that Blood Compact, Sikatuna and Legaspi each made a cut on the left arm and collected the dripping blood oozing there from in a single vessel and mixed with wine. From that single vessel, two others were filled giving one to Sikatuna and the other to Legaspi. The two leaders drank the mixture of their blood.
The Blood Compact sealed the ties of friendship between two people once different in religion, nationality, culture and civilization. The Tagbilaran native chieftain who swore by his ancestral Anito and Bathala, and the Spanish intrepid explorer and colonizer, who sought New World with the sword and the cross, drank to the common cause - friendship. It was the first international treaty of friendship and comity between the Filipinos and Spaniards.
