Spanish Filipinos

Spanish Filipino or Hispanic Filipino (Spanish: Español Filipino, Hispano Filipino, Tagalog: Kastílang Pilipino, Cebuano: Katsílà) are people of Spanish and Filipino heritage. The term includes all individuals of Spanish descent in the Philippines, including criollos and mestizos who identify with Spanish culture, history and language.

According to the 2020 Philippine census, 4,952 individual citizens self-identified as ethnically Spanish in the Philippines.

Forming a small part of the Spanish diaspora, the heritage of Spanish Filipinos may come recently from Spain, from descendants of the earlier Spanish settlers during the Spanish colonial period in the Philippines, or from Spain's viceroyalties in Hispanic America, such as Mexico, whose capital Mexico City held administrative power over the captaincy general of the Philippines in the colonial era.

Many of their communities in Spain, the Americas, Australia, and the Philippines trace their origin to the early settlers from Europe and Mexico during the Spanish colonial period as well as native populations of Southeast Asia, and in recent overseas migration in the 1900s.

In the Philippines depending on the specific provinces, in the late 1700s to early 1800s they formed as much as 19% in the capital city of Manila at formerly named Tondo province, and about 1.38% of the Ilocos region, 2.17% of Cebu or 16.72% of Bataan and other parts of the country.

It is a common misconception that the word "Filipino" only referred to the Spanish population that settled in the Philippines during the colonial period. But in his book Barangay, the American historian William Henry Scott wrote that, though the Spaniards called the natives of the islands they named Filipinas, indios, ". . . when it was necessary to distinguish the indios of the Philippines from those of the Americas, they were called Filipinos. So Pedro Chirino’s 1604 Relación has a chapter on “The food and terms of course and food manners of the Filipinos” (Chirino 1604, 36), and Juan Francisco de San Antonio devotes a chapter of his 1738 Crónicas to “The letters, languages, and politeness of the Philipinos” (San Antonio 1738, 140), . . . In short, the people of the Philippines were called Filipinos when they were practicing their own culture — or, to put it another way, before they became indios”. He later on explains the misconception: “In the nineteenth century, Spaniards born in the colony began to be called Españoles filipinos to distinguish them from Spaniards born in Spain, a designation which was logically contracted to Filipinos when speaking of Spaniards. . . Sinibaldo de Mas (1843, 138) in his 1842 population estimates, more neutrally divides Spaniards and Filipinos into the following categories — Filipinos (indios), Espanoles filipinos, and Españoles europeos. “Indio filipino” was just how Francisco Suárez signed himself a century before when he engraved a portrait of Philip V for Pedro Murillo Velarde’s 1743 Cusus Juris Canonici (frontispiece), and native Filipinos were still using the term in the next century. As Jose Rizal (1887,111) said of the Philippine community in Madrid, “Creoles, Mestizos and Malays, we simply call ourselves Filipinos.” Furthermore, a manuscript prepared by Filipinas Royal Commissioner Don Sinibaldo de Mas, which was published in Madrid in 1843, referred to the natives as ‘filipinos’ who "originated in Borneo" and "believed in a powerful God they called Bathala Maykapal". de Mas furthermore iterated that the Spaniards "improperly" called the natives indios/Indians, and that there were many inhabitants in the islands who "passed as Filipinos and paid tribute", though they had European ancestry.

Spaniards, Latin Americans and Spanish-speaking Filipinos were referred to by native Filipinos as "Kastila", a word for "Castilian" which means the region and language of Castile.

Filipinos of Spanish backgrounds numbered at about 4,952 people, while Mestizo Filipinos of mixed native Filipino and European ancestry made up about 5% of the Philippines' population during the 1700s.

The abrupt decline of Spanish Filipinos as a percentage of the population is due to the events of the Philippine Revolution during the Philippine Republic in the late 1800s, as Filipinos of Spanish heritage choose to identify themselves as native Filipino, as part of establishing a united national identity in the country, or some have relocated back to Spain, or have migrated to other countries during that period.

During and after the second phase of the Philippine Revolution, the term "Filipino" included people of all nationalities and race, born in the Philippines.

Today, Hispanic Filipinos are found in all social classes worldwide, from upper wealthy to lower poor disadvantage backgrounds, and from high profiled individuals to ordinary unknown people. They have long integrated into the native communities living their lives as ordinary citizens. However most of the successful individuals are present in economics and business sectors in the Philippines and a few sources estimate companies which comprise a significant portion of the Philippine economy like Ynchausti y Compañia, MBC Media Group, Ayala Corporation (Ayala Land, Bank of the Philippine Islands, Globe Telecom, Integrated Micro-Electronics, Inc.,), Aboitiz & Company, (Aboitiz Power, Union Bank of the Philippines), ANSCOR (Amanpulo), Razon & Co. Inc. (International Container Terminal Services Inc., Manila Water, Solaire Resort & Casino, Apex Mining Co., Inc.) and Central Azucarera de La Carlota, to name but a few are owned by Hispanic Filipinos.