CEBU, Philippines - The House of Representatives has approved House Bill (HB) No. 5214 declaring January 6 of every year as a special non-working holiday in Toledo City in celebration of its Charter Day.
Deputy Speaker for the Visayas and Cebu Third District Representative Gwendolyn Garcia re-filed HB No. 1637 on July 18, 2016 and it was substituted by HB No. 5214 when it was passed and transmitted to the Senate.
Following the request of the City Council of Toledo through a resolution sponsored by former councilor Ricardo “Kuya Nick” Pepito, Garcia first filed HB No. 4984 in 2014 but it did not pass in the previous Congress.
On June 19, 1960, Toledo became a chartered city under Republic Act No. 2688. It was made into a city through the efforts of former congressman Manuel A. Zosa, representative of the old Sixth District of Cebu, who authored Republic Act No. 2688.
The city has since celebrated its charter day every January 6th. It has been a long-standing tradition in Toledo City to celebrate with merriment, meaning, and significance to provide its hardworking residents the time to reminisce their city’s founding day and to boost their camaraderie as a community of peace-loving citizens.
Toledo was originally known as “Hinulawan”, a name derived from the Hinulawan River which runs across the municipality.
It was renamed Toledo, during its establishment as a new town, borrowing the name from a province of Spain.
One of the earliest recorded history of Toledo, the “Estadismo” of Fr. Joaquin de Zuniga, reported that Toledo City already had a settled community of a little over 500 inhabitants as early as the 1800s.
When the first Philippine Republic was formed under President Emilio Aguinaldo, Toledo was converted into a district of Cebu Province and governed by a “Junta Popular.”
Following the colonization of the archipelago in 1896 to 1946, Toledo became a full-pledged municipality when Governor Francis Burton Harrison signed Act No. 119 on December 19, 1919.
Toledo saw a few changes during the first 40 years of its independence as a municipality.
Economic growth came to Toledo in the 1950s after the Atlas Consolidated Mining and Development Corporation (ACMDC), one of the biggest copper mines in the world, started the development of a large porphyry copper ore plant in Barrio Don Andres Soriano, located nearly 16 kilometers from the town’s poblacion. —/JBB (FREEMAN)