by: Mike Baños

July 1, 2006

President Gloria Arroyo has just completed a state visit to Spain, estranged mother country of  Heneral Vicente Alvarez’ Zamboanga Republic and home of La Virgen del Pilar de Zaragosa, patron saint of La Bella.

One of the initiatives the government, through the Tourism Department, is immediately looking at as a result of that visit is to bring Spanish recreational divers to our shores and preferably under our waters.

Instead of shooting for a share of the 10 million Spaniards who travel abroad for leisure every year, the Tourism Department will instead focus on the two million scuba divers among this batch. Tourism Sec. Ace Durano said the country’s share of that market is a pitiful 8,000 divers.

Durano believes one of the reasons why Spaniards prefer China, Thailand or Vietnam is the Philippines' not being sufficiently "culturally exotic", being perceived to be more Western than Asian, our cultural ties with Spain notwithstanding.

That may be true of other places in the country, but I still believe a determined promotion offensive on all fronts will bring to Zamboanga City not only the Spanish divers, but otros turistas Castellano tambien.

Primero, este rinconcito de España has very strong cultural ties with Spain, foremost of which is our Chabacano language and culture which is firmly rooted into the genealogy of El Cid and Ruy Lopez de Legazpi.  The ties go beyond the language and into traceable family relations into specific cities and provincias of Spain which can be tapped by our local tourism honchos, led by our good friend Ric San Juan.

Por nuestro familia, por ejemplo, we can declare with a fair amount of certainty that our abuelo Julian Baños, who wed the bella Felipa Lorenzo, was definitely a ranking officer of the Spanish Army Engineers from the city of Seville, el mismo ciudad of Rossini’s barbero.

Y despues, there’s the religious connections forged over the past five centuries which can be seen most evidently in our Fiesta Pilar, our celebration of the City Charter Day that falls on el dia mismo of the Feast Day of Nuestra Señora Virgen del Pillar de Zaragosa. I understand there’s already a thriving Zamboangueño community in that original home of La Virgen del Pillar, and the recent city council resolution of Consejal Milabel Enriquez to establish sisterhood relations with Zaragosa is definitely a step in the right direction.

Equally important, not to forget Zamboanga City itself has among the most beautiful dive sites in the entire Mindanao, if not the entire country. Foreign hosted dive websites rave about the Great Santa Cruz island, "playground of the rich and famous, with its tantalizingly beautiful scenery, its rare "pink sand", crystal clear water and "a symphony of varied living corals where an abundant colorful tropical sea lives, this is truly a fantastic place. Over half of the world’s known sea shell varieties come from here..."  

Durano, who also chairs the Philippine Commission on Sports Scuba Diving, said the trip had also enabled the delegation to "bombard" Spanish divers with information about our dive sites. He said the Philippines had sent many people to Spain to be trained on tourism matters, this country being one of the world’s biggest targets of tourist organizers.

With even the first three inbuilt advantages alone, Zamboanga City has the inside track in snaring more of those Spanish divers for a start, with the Spanish culture vultures inevitably following not far behind once news of the "re-discovery" of this rinconcito de España reaches Castilian shores and fires them up with the fever to undertake a new voyage of discovery to this same place where their ancestors trod not so long ago.

We don’t even have to send people to Spain like what Ace Durano is doing to be trained on tourism matters to lure more Español to our city. Ric and his able staff, together with the people of Primo Celso at City Hall y Ñor Erbie in the congressional office and the city council under Vice Mayor Isabel can put their heads together to mobilize an "internet chat offensive" to invite Spaniards to La Bella. Flood all the Spanish chat rooms with invitations from all those young people crowding our internet cafes!

I personally observed how Dipolog City managed to do this, albeit on an unofficial, disorganized basis, yet their city is now crawling not only with Caucasian but foreign tourists from everywhere, and many of them opted to stay behind in the Orchid City to boot!

You see, once all those Castellanos see how much more Zamboanga City has to offer compared even to China, Vietnam or Thailand in terms of culture and history (we also had the Dutch, British, and Chinese knocking on the doors of Fort Pilar, in addition to their favorite sukis, the Moro legions of Tagal and Bungsuan, not to mention the lumad Sama, Lutaos and Subanos who established the first village of Zamboanga in the shadow of the fort) I don’t see how we can start a new wave of conquest towards  our shores.

Besides the cultural-religious connection, I also believe we of the Chabacano persuasion have an inbuilt advantage in cashing in on the business outsourcing boom now sweeping Manila, Cebu and Cagayan de Oro.

In this respect, we’ve even fallen behind Marawi already: The Mindanao State University (MSU) has already signed a deal with an international call c

Remember, all Muslim youths undergo mandatory training in Arabic in the Madrasahs. That gives them an even longer exposure than what our Zamboangueño youth would undergo for mandatory Chabacano training in their first two years of primary school and four semesters of Spanish in college!

The tourism department tells us the number of tourists arrivals in the Philippines had been growing, with the country earning $2.5 billion in "tourism receipts" last year.  Ace Durano is shooting for the stars and aims to increase the 2.6 million foreign visitors last year to five million every year.