Calauan

Calauan
Municipality
Calauan Welcome Arch
Seal
Nickname(s): Home of the Sweetest Pineapple
Map of Laguna showing the location of Calauan
Calauan Location within the Philippines
Coordinates: 14°09′N 121°19′E / 14.15°N 121.32°E / 14.15; 121.32Coordinates: 14°09′N 121°19′E / 14.15°N 121.32°E / 14.15; 121.32
Country	Philippines
Region	CALABARZON (Region IV-A)
Province	Laguna
District	3rd district of Laguna
Barangays	15
Government
• Mayor	Buenafrido T. Berris
Area
• Total	65.40 km2 (25.25 sq mi)
Population (2015 census)
• Total	80,453
• Rank	9 out of 30 (in Laguna)
• Density	1,200/km2 (3,200/sq mi)
Time zone	PST (UTC+8)
ZIP code	4012
IDD : area code	+63 (0)49
Income class	2nd
Electorate	34,676 voters (2016)
Website	www.calauanlaguna.gov.ph

Calauan is a second class municipality in the province of Laguna, Philippines. According to the 2015 census, it has a population of 80,453 people.

The town got its name from the term kalawang, which means rust. Folklore has it that the town got its name when the Spanish started construction of the Municipal Church and water seeped in from the holes dug into the ground for the Church's foundation. The water was colored brown and rusty in character hence the name Calauan (Kalawang). Calauan is known for the Pineapple Festival, which is celebrated every 15 May.

The patron saint of Calauan is Isidore the Laborer, the patron of farmers, known in Spanish as San Isidro Labrador.

Calauan's population is expected rise as the town is being used as resettlement of informal settlers in Metro Manila through the Bayan ni Juan and the Kapit-Bisig para sa Ilog Pasig project of the ABS-CBN Foundation.

Popular destinations in the area include the Field of Faith situated in Brgy. Lamot 2 and the Isdaan Floating Restaurant located along the National Highway going to Victoria Laguna.

The fertile soil of Calauan attracted attention of Captain Juan de Salcedo, when he passed through Laguna and Tayabas (now Quezon) on his way to Bicol Region in 1570. Ten years later, Spanish authorities established a town government two kilometers from the site of the present Poblacion, in what is now Barrio Mabacan. They called the townsite “Calauan” (Tagalog word for rust). Following in epidemic in 1703, the town was moved to its present site at the fork of three roads---now to the south-west leading to San Pablo City, the other southeastward to Sta. Cruz, the provincial capital, and the third going North to Manila.

At the turn of the 18th century, when Bay was designated as the provincial capital of Laguna, Calauan became a sitio of Bay. Merchants going to Southern Luzon passed through Bay and Calauan. One of them, an opulent Spaniard by the name of Iñigo, bought large tracts of land in Calauan in 1812. The landholdings of Iñigo and, later, of his heirs were so vast that many portions were still unsettled. The property was and still is, known as Hacienda Calauan. About a century later, the people of Calauan fought a “guardia civil” during the Philippine Revolution. Basilio Geiroza (better known as Cabesang Basilio) and his men routed a battalion of “guardia civiles” in a five-hour battle in Bario Cupangan (now Lamot I) in December 1897. During the subsequent Philippine-American hostilities, Calauan patriots fought numerically superior forces of General Otis in Barrio San Diego of San Pablo. With the establishment of civilian authority in Calauan in 1902, the Americans assigned Mariano Marfori as first “presidente”. Hacienda Calauan financed the construction of a hospital in 1926, and Mariano O. Marfori, Jr. son of the first municipal presidente, as hospital director and the resident physician, respectively.