History of "Zamboanga Hermosa"

My recent trip to the National Library proved to be very fruitful as I was able to gain a lot of insights into Zamboanga City's history from a book called "Zamboanga hermosa : memories of the old town".

I first heard of this book in my early 20s but I was never able to get my hands on it until now. I had known that it was available in several libraries in Manila, though.

Yesterday, my friend and I went to the National Library which had a copy of this book so I was finally able to read it and one of the interesting things that I was able to glean from the book was the history of the song "Zamboanga Hermosa".

While it seems like people knew the song "Zamboanga Hermosa", the writer of the song was unknown and nobody cared about who wrote it. It wasn't until the 1970s when the city council made the song, the city's "official hymn", that curiosity arose concerning who wrote it.

Today, since most people no longer have any exposure to the Spanish language, Chavacano speakers will often identify this as the Chavacano spoken in the past. The idea that people in Zamboanga spoke Spanish is hard to imagine for most of them.

Those who know Spanish will find it weird to see the term "dalaga" in a song that looks to be written in Spanish. However, this word is actually found in the diccionario de la lengua española.

I'm not sure if "deliciosa ciudad" would also look weird to those who know Spanish but the adjective delicioso or deliciosa is not only used for food, it is also used for places (as well as other things that are experienced like music or even people).

Do people still remember the time when Macron called the wife of the Australian Prime Minister "delicious"?

When the book "Zamboanga hermosa : memories of the old town" was written, they still knew enough Spanish to correctly identify that this song was written in Spanish. In fact, the Jesuit priest, Fr. Hilario Lim concluded that it was Vicente Orendain that wrote the lyrics for this song based on his judgment of Orendain's work in Spanish.

Excerpt from "Zamboanga hermosa : memories of the old town

Orendain was known to write Spanish poetry, unfortunately, his works were destroyed during WW2. I can't find his cause of death online but he may have died young because based on the book, his mother was still alive when he died in 1934.

It was only around fifty years later, in 1981, that 35 of Orendain's poems, spared from the ravages of war, landed in the hands of Fr. Hilario Lim and apparently, based on his judgement, Vicente Orendain was the only person capable of writing Spanish poetry that well.

The family seems to agree with the story, however. In the book written by one of his relatives, "Zamboanga hermosa : memories of the old town", personal accounts from family members point to 1923 as the time when the song was written as a poem by Vicente Orendain. It was however a Cebuano, Lou Borromeo, who asked Orendain to write the lyrics for a song that he created. 

Originally, the title was "Ilonga Hermosa" because Borromeo wrote the song for an Ilongga lass that he was enamored with. Later, Orendain rewrote the lyrics for "Zamboanga Hermosa".