Feliz Dia de la Amistad Filipino-Espanyola: Celebrating Filipino-Spanish Friendship Day

Janica Tujan

The preparation for the Philippine-Spanish Friendship Day was so sudden that we only had the weekend to prepare each of the members’ tasked. Before anything else, the members of the working committee for the Philippine-Spanish Friendship Day was composed of third year IRFS majors and one fourth year IRFS major belonging to team Titan which made this event under team Titan.

The composition of the working committee for the Philippine-Spanish Friendship Day are only those who were willing to work on the celebration of the event. It was right after the IRFS Track Orientation when the track adviser approached those who expressed their willingness to help come up with an activity in celebration of the Philippine-Spanish Friendship Day and asked them to plan something, it need not be a big event so long as the message of the celebration which was to raise awareness was delivered. Due to the lack of time, the working committee only came up with an information hoisting drive through giving out brochures on the fourth floor of the Ernest Hoerdemann (Law Building) for Political Science Majors. The brochure shows bits and pieces of “did you know?” facts about Spanish relationship with Filipinos and some personalities in relation to the two countries as well. The working committee divided the tasks to accomplish in order to finish it over the weekend and distribute it first thing on Monday morning.

Morning of June 30, the brochures were ready to be distributed. The working committee divided the brochures so each of them could distribute it during their vacant hours of the day. Some of the brochures were placed next to the magazines displayed at the Baristo for reading purposes. Some people were delighted to receive the brochures because they learned something new but some could hardly care less about what the brochure is about and did not even care that on that day we celebrate or commemorate Philippine-Spanish Friendship Day. Perhaps they were skeptical about the rationale behind the celebration of this event considering that we used to be a former colony of Spain and the great discomfort it has brought upon our ancestors.

The information included by the working committee on the brochure are more of stock knowledge, some used the site Wikipedia so there was not really a scholarly grounding on the information used by the working committee. See the sample of the brochure that was distributed below.