A clean and green Plaza Binalonan

From last week’s trip down to Cagayan de Oro in Mindanao to visit Gaston Park, we head back to Luzon for the ninth in our series on Philippine plazas. We visit a town in Pangasinan whose origin traces itself back to where farmers used to take their packed food (balon or baon) to enjoy a midday break in the fields just outside modern-day Urdaneta City.

I was traveling north on business and decided to take a road trip with a few associates to as many towns in our weekday jaunt as we could. The object was to do a quick documentation of these towns’ and cities’ plazas. I’ll feature the other plazas of Pangasinan and Pampanga in the following weeks, but we start with the expansive and well-maintained plaza of Binalonan.

The town’s origin was as a land grant to a Spanish official named Don Salvador. The story goes that he ordered workers to construct a simple fence along his entire property, a project of no small size. Don Salvador’s men would bring their food and eat under shady camachile trees near the center of the property as it was breezy there.?Don Salvador eventually offered his land for tilling and, when asked how to find it, answered, “It is the place where people bring their balon to eat.” Binalonan in Ilocano means “a place where people bring and eat their baon (or balon).”

The more formal history of the place indicates that the town was established as a settlement of Ilocano immigrants who worked as herdsmen and laborers in the early 1800s. Records state that a Fr. Julian Izaga set the original site of Binalonan in the barrio of San Felipe. It was later moved to the barrio of Santa Catalina, where the good father constructed a church and a convent. Initially made of light construction materials, the church complex was rebuilt several times after an earthquake in 1882 and the Filipino-American war.

The town grew and established itself as a key municipality in rice production for the province. The town today boasts a population of close to 60,000. Its proximity to Urdaneta City has contributed to its growth. Mangoes augment its main produce of rice. The town also hosts an airfield for civil aviation and a college related to it, the WCC Aeronautical and Technological College.

In 1968 Binalonan was awarded “The Most Beautiful and Cleanest Town in the Philippines” by Malacañang Palace. Since then it has garnered several citations, as “Most Beautiful Plaza and Parks,” “Outstanding Community Development Model” and “Urban Model Community,” among others.

From Urdaneta City one enters the town off the main highway via McKinley Street. The town’s streets are wide and the streetscape noticeably clean and green. Less than a kilometer in, you will hit the town center, a large four-and-a-half-hectare oasis of green. This greenery is made distinctive because of a forest of mature acacia trees. The majestic canopies remind me of UP Diliman. The town’s website claims they are a century or so in age.

The Binalonan city hall complex is inset from the main street about 80 meters and is accessed by a wide driveway, which culminates in a grand fountain. On both sides of the driveway are manicured lawns. When we stopped to take pictures, we saw two horses grazing on the lawn.

The city hall structure itself appears to be a ’60s-era structure, a two-story affair, which would benefit from a more imposing façade. It gets lost in proportion to the open space in front of it. Unlike other town plazas, Binalonan’s is less defined by structures along the perimeter than by the trees which frame and are contained in the space. It might be more appropriate to call the complex a park, as the plaza component is embedded within the green.

The locals call the center of this greenery the Binalonan Rock Garden. The park and the church complex behind is accessed by a tree-lined “mystic pathway.” The entrance to this pathway holds the 1968 marker that declares the town the most beautiful and cleanest in the country.

An odd portal structure was built over this entry, probably in the 1970s, and houses one of the municipal offices above. More recently, on both sides of the pathway, the town has added more small but modern structures, housing a Community E-Center and a Techno-Hub. The rest of the area contains a gymnasium, a large concrete tree house and other elements providing a good variety of facilities to the public.

The Sto. Niño parish church at the rear appears also to be a post-war reconstruction or renovation. It sits comfortably in a complex of about a hectare and is accessible from three sides. We noticed several small buildings under construction around the area, but nonetheless the pervasive shade and structure of the acacia canopies seem to smooth out all these separate elements and the space seems to be very popular and well used by the townspeople.

I give this plaza a 7.5 out of 10. The town has done a good job of keeping its generous area of green conserved, clean, and well maintained.

More Philippine plazas next week as we rediscover public space and its importance to our increasingly urban lives.

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Feedback is welcome. Please email the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.