Nabua, Camarines Sur--“AKO NA ginikanan ninyo, rinugba ninyo ako (I who conceived you, you have destroyed).” In the internet site Nabua Forum, this statement is found marqueed over a picture of the demolished Gabaldon school building in Nabua, Camarines Sur. The building is currently the cause of protest among concerned Nabueños disgusted with the unreasonable demolition of a supposedly heritage structure by the local government here.
Concerned citizens led by scholar and filmmaker, Ma. Ledda Docot, particularly expressed sentiments against Nabua Mayor Ferdinand Simbulan who, despite the knowledge of the heritage value of the structure, urgings from the Nabua Kultura Volunteers, National Historical Institute (NHI) and the Heritage Conservation Society (HCS), still managed to have the Gabaldon Building demolished.
On June 16, 2008, HCS Chair Gemma Cruz Araneta wrote Mayor Simbulan on the historical significance of the structure and the urgent need to preserve it. In the letter, Araneta wrote: “I was informed that many of your constituents in Nabua graduated from that Gabaldon-type school you have there and they feel a strong emotional attachment to it, specially now that it is an ‘endangered species’. That is why, in behalf of the HCS I would like to appeal to your sense of ‘pride of place’ to save Nabua’s precious heritage.”
Docot personally delivered Araneta’s letter to the mayor’s office hoping to have a short dialogue with the mayor. Docot told Vox Bikol that she failed to see the mayor, and it was not really clear if the mayor had the intention of seeing her because she was just made to wait for hours and thereafter was told by the mayor’s assistant Mama Juanillas “Diri man iiwagon a Gabaldon. Kin uno ikararahay ka Nabua, san sana kita (The Gabaldon won’t be demolished. Let’s work on whatever will bring development to Nabua”.) Docot added that a certain Llorin, the president of Nabua’s Senior Citizens League, from whom she was asking for help, made her feel discouraged by asking her, “Siisay man ika? Unung organisasyon man iton? (Who are you to ask for such consideration?)”
On July 2008, a lecture on heritage preservation was conducted in Nabua through the aid of the pool of trainers of the National Historical Institute. And on October of the same year, NHI Chair Ambeth Ocampo wrote Mayor Simbulan requesting to put on hold the proposed demolition of the Gabaldon building for its heritage and architectural merits.
Despite all these appeals, the local government of Nabua, led by Mayor Ferdinand Simbulan, still demolished the century-old Gabaldon schoolbuilding. Reports say that a branch of the Bikolbased chain of malls LCC will be constructed at the site of the demolished Gabaldon. Docot’s group questions the essence of this move, and of the political motives of Simbulan whose wife Delia is said to run for mayor in the 2010 elections.
It should be noted that the construction of Gabaldon school buildings all over the Philippines was introduced by Assemblyman Isauro Gabaldon through Act 1801—The Gabaldon Act—which appropriated 1 million pesos between 1907 to 1915 for the “construction of schoolhouses of strong materials in barrios with guaranteed daily attendance of not less than sixty pupils…”
In contrast to what happened in Nabua, the few remaining Gabaldon school houses throughout the Philippines are being restored as essential heritage structures.