About bulacan

Bulacan, officially the Province of Bulacan, is a province in the Philippines located in the Central Luzon region. Its capital is the city of Malolos. Bulacan was established on August 15, 1578, and part of the Metro Luzon Urban Beltway Super Region.

It has 569 barangays in 20 municipalities and four component cities (Baliwag, Malolos the provincial capital, Meycauayan, and San Jose del Monte). Bulacan is located immediately north of Metro Manila. Bordering Bulacan are the provinces of Pampanga to the west, Nueva Ecija to the north, Aurora and Quezon to the east, and Metro Manila and Rizal to the south. Bulacan also lies on the north-eastern shore of Manila Bay.

In the 2020 census, Bulacan had a population of 3,708,890 people, the most populous in Central Luzon and the third most populous in the Philippines, after Cebu and Cavite. Bulacan's most populated city is San Jose del Monte, the most populated municipality is Santa Maria while the least populated is Doña Remedios Trinidad.

In 1899, the historic Barasoain Church in Malolos was the birthplace of the first constitutional democracy in Asia.

On November 7, 2018, the Provincial Government of Bulacan bagged its fourth Seal of Good Local Governance award. The SGLG award is a progressive assessment system that gives distinction to remarkable governance performance.

This province is a part of the Greater Manila Area.

Brief History

The province’s name is derived from the Tagalog word ‘bulak’ meaning cotton, which was its former principal product. Bulacan started with small fishing settlements along the coast of Manila Bay and expanded into the interior with the arrival of the Spaniards. These settlements formed the nucleus of towns that were founded from 1572 (Bulacan and Calumpit) to 1750 (San Rafael). In 1848, the town of San Miguel was annexed to Bulacan from Pampanga.

Bulacan was one of the first eight provinces to rise against Spanish rule. The first phase of the Philippine Revolution ended with the signing of the Pact of Biak-na-Bato in San Miguel in 1897 between the Filipinos and the Spaniards, after which Aguinaldo was exiled to Hong Kong. The second phase saw the drafting of the constitution of the first Philippine Republic by the Malolos Congress at Barasoain Church in 1898. The subsequently established republic had its capital at Malolos until President Emilio Aguinaldo transferred it to San Isidro, Nueva Ecija in 1899 when the Filipino-American War broke out. When the Americans established a civil government in the Philippines, they held the first election in the country in the town of Baliuag on May 6, 1899.

Bulacan is the home province of heroes like Francisco Baltazar (Balagtas), “The Prince of Filipino Poets,” Marcelo H. Del Pilar, “The Great Propagandist,” and Gregorio del Pilar, “The Hero of Tirad Pass.” Bulacan is popularly known as the “Gateway to the Northern Philippines.”