PLACES: Barangay Real

Barangay Real shares a remarkable chunk in Calamba’s history. It was once the gateway to Calamba from Batangas. In fact, early inhabitants of Barangay Real were Batangueños. They were sugarcane, rice and vegetable farmers.

Population in this once farming village began to grow upon the establishment of a sugar mill in 1911. The whole of Real used to be friar lands, a part of Hacienda San Juan Bautista then known as Calamba Nueva (New Calamba). The rest of the hacienda, then called Calamba Vieja (Old Calamba} was owned by the Jesuits until their historical suppression and expulsion by Spain in the mid-18th Century when the King sold the Jesuit’s portion of the hacienda to the Dominican Order for 40,000 pesos.

The Spanish word “Real” has varied meanings. It could be “Royal” or noble, it could also be the unit of currency in Spain after the mid-14th Century, or it could mean an “Army Camp.” Thus, many stories about how the place got its name were created by imaginative settlers. Some say that nobles used to dwell there, and were often robbed by bandits with their silver “Reales” and the loot were called “Pinagrealan,” a word commonly used in a phrase by the locals for effortlessly acquired goods or money. Others on the other hand say that a Civil Guard Camp once occupy a part of the village.

When Spain ceded the Philippine Islands to the United States, large tracts of agricultural lands were owned by the great religious orders. The government under the American rule acquired the Friar lands and sold them to tenants in small holdings on easy terms. Approximately 2,500 hectares of the land went to the possession of the Philippine Sugar Estate Development Company (LTD). These lands included properties in Barangays Bucal, La Mesa, Maunong, Saimsim, Puting Lupa up to Majadang Labas, including Prinza which was a dam and Turbina where a turbine maintained by the company was once located on a river then called “El Real” (Now San Juan River) to supply electricity in the sugar mill and also used to irrigate nearby farms. The operation of this turbine later becomes a subject of controversy which reached the high courts.

Prominent citizens of Real before the war included Japanese families, an Indian Family called Singh and a Spanish family named Arevalo. They worked and held high positions in the mill. .

During the Japanese occupation, the Imperial Army seized the sugar factory and took possession of all its properties and converted the vast sugarcane plantation into cotton fields. A school was later established here by the Japanese in an old family home owned by the Alihans. Classes for Grade I was conducted by a certain Miss Cansanay.

Before the year 1943 ends, news spread that the war shall soon be over. The Americans are coming. Many Filipinos were ecstatic and excited until Japanese soldiers rounded up all male residents of Calamba in the ploy of forced labor. They were gathered at the Calamba Parish Church in February 12, 1944, and then later hauled to Barangay Real on trucks. Real became a stage of the most gruesome war crime in history− the massacre of thousands of male Calamba residents. They were distributed in 15 houses in Real where they were literally butchered. One of which was the house of the Estacios. The killing began at 4:00 o’clock in the afternoon. Men were bayoneted, shot or whacked with hard wood or iron bars. The once verdant color of Barangay Real turned red. Blood oozed on the ground flowing to the community canal, tainting its water with the color of blood. Later, when the murderers were done and exhausted, the 15 houses where the killings occur were sodden with gasoline and burned.

After the war, Barangay Real gradually stood again. Children who missed school for years went back to their classrooms through the joint efforts of Victorio Gilacon, Juan Daof, Camilo Altagundi, Tomas Javier and Apolonio Delgado. School opened in July 1945 in the residence of the Alihans. Teachers in Grade One were Miss Piedad Bernardino in the morning and Miss Catalina Elepaño in the afternoon. Elementary pupils in neighboring barangays come to Barangay Real to attend classes in Grade IV to Grade VI. Mr. Pablo Escala was the school principal.

The sugar mill reopened in 1947, labor disputes however erupted in 1950 and worsened in 1954 leading to the closure of the Philippine Sugar Estate Development Company (LTD).

While the events of Barangay Real’s past still faintly glimmer, it now has a different face. Barangay Real now hosts Calamba’s New City Hall, The New Calamba Plaza, which features one of Dr. Jose P. Rizal’s tallest statues in the world, SM City and Calamba Medical Center.

Barangay Real’s population as of the NSO’s latest census in 2014 was 16,507 in 3,678 households.

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(Source: Sofia de la Cruz in Prezi, Government of the Philippine Islands Court Record March 13, 1918)