Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar

Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar is a sprawling property from over 400 hectares in the midst of Bagac, Bataan, Philippines.[1]

Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar
View of the hotel grounds
Location within the Philippines
Type	Hotel and heritage park
Location	Bagac, Bataan
Coordinates	14°36′09.6″N 120°23′06.9″E
Area	400,000 m^2 (4,300,000 sq ft)
Created	2003
Website	lascasasfilipinas.com

An open-air museum and heritage resort consisting of 128 guest rooms and 63 elite casas, Las Casas is a restored piece of history saved from total ruin and neglect.

Currently, the property has four major restaurants including Cusina ni Nanay Maria, Café Marivent, Café del Rio, and La Bella Teodora. It also features a beach, a batis-inspired swimming pool, and a man-made estero.

Location

Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar is nestled at Barangay Ibaba, Bagac, Bataan (Region 3, Central Luzon, Philippines).

History and description

Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar is a reconstructed 18th-century Filipino settlement that showcases the best of Filipino heritage and culture through the colorful stories as retold by José “Jerry” Acuzar’s collection of restored Spanish-Filipino houses.

One of the successful projects of New San Jose Builders, Incorporated, Las Casas opened its doors to the public in 2010 – almost seven years after owner Acuzar started rebuilding Spanish colonial-era mansions in his sprawling property.

Each of the Filipino-Spanish houses were dismantled brick-by-brick, numbered, transported to the Bagac site, and were re-assembled and restored. For parts that were missing, Las Casas craftsmen replicated the original structure.

Aside from the architectural treats, Las Casas commissions a total of 148 artisans from dying art industries and houses their respective families inside the Bataan sprawl. These craftsmen hail from different parts of the country – including Romblon, Laguna, Pampanga, even Bataan and Manila.

Heritage houses

Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar contains 30 heritage houses.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

• Casa Balayan 1 from Batangas
• Casa Balayan 2 from Batangas
• Casa Balanga from Bataan
• Casa Baliuag 1 - (built in 1898; owned by the Vergel de Dios family). The house contains wood carvings with floral motifs. The original owner of Casa Baliwag was Kapitan Fernando Vergel de Dios and Doña Carmen De Leon; it was inherited by their eldest daughter, Juliana VD Reyes. It was originally across the town's San Agustín Church. Family members fondly called it "Luwasan" since it was the house referred to when going towards the town or to Manila. Kapitan Fernando had another house called "Hulo", which was going towards the "dulo" or end of town.
• Casa Baliuag 2 - originally in the compound of Iglesia ni Cristo in Baliuag. It was owned by a González.
• Casa Biñan (Alberto House) - is a partial replica of the house of Teodora Alonso, the mother of national hero José Rizal. Acuzar used the original wooden door, stairs and a few planks when he recreated it. He abandoned the planned donation of the house by its current owner, Gerardo Alberto, after new broke out regarding his planned acquisition of the heritage house. Hundreds protested his acquisition, while numerous heritage groups called the acquisition a "tragedy" in heritage conservation. The original house has been 'gutted', as half have been transported to Las Casas.[2]
• Casa Binondo 1 from Manila
• Casa Binondo 2 from Manila
• Casa Bonita
• Casa Bizantina – (built in 1890) is a three-storey, intricately designed bahay na bato from Binondo, Manila. The Instituto de Manila (now the University of Manila) once rented it for elementary and high school classes until 1919, when the school moved to Sampaloc, Manila. After World War II, the building was leased to tenants, who later gave way to a squatters' colony before the building was demolished in 2009.[3]
• Casa Cagayan -a collection of four wooden houses built on stilts. Such houses were usually regarded as those of poor people in Cagayan in the early 1900s.
• Casa Candaba - (built in 1780, owned by the Reyes family) was home to the Spanish Governor-General whenever he visited Pampanga.
• Casa Hidalgo - (built in 1867) was the first campus of the University of the Philippines’ School of Fine Arts, of which its owner Rafael Enríquez was the first director. Thence, it has housed the first school of architecture in the country, a bowling alley, a dormitory, and flesh joint.
• Casa Jaen 1 and 2 - Two houses from Jaen, Nueva Ecija, originally owned by the Esquivel clan. Casa Jaen 1, also known as the Don Hilario Esquivel House, was built in the 1900s and won the House Beautiful Award in 1917 by the Sunday Tribune.[4]
• Casa Lubao - (built in 1920; owned by the Arrastia and Vitug families) served as a storehouse for rice and sugar, and became a Japanese garrison during World War II. It was built by the couple Don Valentin Arrastia y Roncal, who arrived from Asturias, Spain in the 1810s and owner of the largest haciendas in Lubao, and his wife Francisca Salgado y Serrano. Later, their daughter Doña Juanita Arrastia and her husband Dr. Wenceslao Vitug lived in the property. Juanita was very wealthy with indigo, sugarcane and rice lands to her name. She was known for her extremely long tresses of hair. Her marriage was out of love, and unconventional, for she chose Wenceslao, a very poor but brilliant scholar doctor. In their lifetime, they were known to help, feed, and utmost be kind to their tenant farmers. They continue to be positively remembered today for giving away their part of the gigantic Arrastia haciendas for free or at cost to their househelp and tenants. The house has a tall and striking front balcony / covered porch. It was perfect to catch the breeze while under the balcony's protection from the seering tropical sun. This is also the same spot that Doña Juanita was assisted by her househelp in combing her very long hair, and where many of the poor of Lubao would ascend to ask help from her or Wenceslao. A story goes that a Japanese colonel stopped his men from burning the house out of gratitude to the Arrastia family, who had unknowingly hired him as a driver and gardener before the war.[3] Juanita's descendants include Mercedes "Mercy" Tuason Arrastia who was Philippine Ambassador to the Vatican, Isabel Preysler former wife of Julio Iglesias and mother of the pop singer Enrique Iglesias, mother to Tamara Isabel Falco y Presyler-Arrastia, now the sixth and de jure royal of the Marquess of Griñón, a Spanish noble title; and lastly, Ana Boyer-Preysler Arrastia,whose father was Miguel Boyer, Spain's economic minister.
• Casa Luna - (owned by the Novicio family) houses a museum. Built in 1850, its original location was in Namacpacan (now Luna, La Union). The town was renamed to honour revolutionaries and brothers Antonio and Juan Luna, whose mother was a daughter of the Novicio clan, Laureana.
• Casa Mexico - salvaged from a junk shop and reconstructed based on an old photograph.
• Casa Meycauayan - (built in 1913 by the Escota family) was built in the City of San Fernando in Pampanga. It was rebuilt in the 1950s in Meycauayan, Bulacan, where Rogelio Urrutia bought it.
• Paseo de Escolta – used old and new material to recreate commercial buildings in the early 1900s in Manila. With 17 rooms, it houses a hotel and shops.
• Casa Unisan - (built 1839) is the Maxino house in Unisan, Quezon. It is made of hardwood complete with trapdoors. Only one girl survived the massacre of the family and that tragedy makes the house much talked about not only for its beauty.[3] Its ground floor is now the hotel's Marivent Café, which serves Filipino food.

Controversy

The management of the resort has been criticized many times in the past due to the nature of its acquisition of heritage structures. Many of the heritage houses, like the bahay-na-bato and torogan, have been acquired by the resort, and transported to its current location, putting away the essential geographic and cultural value of those house to each of the structure’s original domains. Outrage have erupted when the management tried to get the ancestral house of national hero, Jose Rizal, from Calamba before. Half of the building was taken, leaving the half in Calamba. Numerous heritage groups called it a "tragedy" in heritage conservation.[2] Another controversy is the acquisition of two torogons, or royal Maranao houses in Lanao. The torogans were supposedly on track to become one of the properties of a UNESCO inclusion in the Tentative List, but the inclusion was cut short due to Las Casas intervention and eventual acquisition of the royal houses, which it eventually took piece by piece and transported to Bataan.

The indigenous Maranao peoples of Lanao del Sur have been campaigning for the return of the two torogons to their ancestral lands.[5]

References

1. "...a New San Jose Builders project". Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar. Retrieved 21 January 2013.
2. Ranada, Pia (3 November 2012). "The tragedy of Bahay Alberto". Rappler. Retrieved 26 June 2019.
3. Pulumbarit, Veronica (4 January 2014). "Tales of love, lust, and murder at Las Casas Filipinas". GMA News Online. Retrieved 26 June 2019.
4. Laya, PhD, Jaime C. (3 December 2015). "Casa Jaen I". Architecture Online. Blogger. Retrieved 26 June 2019.
5. Villegas, Ramon N. (27 May 2013). "Art installations inaugurate art space at controversial Acuzar 'heritage resort' in Bataan". Philippine Daily Inquirer. Retrieved 26 June 2019.

External links

1. Official website - Las Casas Filipinas
2. Official website - New San Jose Builders
3. Interviews and controversies - Jose Acuzar