Maragondon

Maragondon, officially the Municipality of Maragondon (Tagalog: Bayan ng Maragondon), is a municipality in the province of Cavite, Philippines. According to the 2020 census, it has a population of 40,687 people.

The town is famous for its bamboo crafts, Mounts Palay-Palay–Mataas-na-Gulod Protected Landscape which includes Mount Pico de Loro, and various ancestral houses and structures important to Philippine history and culture such as Maragondon Church and the execution site and trial house of national hero Andres Bonifacio.

The name Maragondon is a Spanish approximation of the Tagalog word maragundong or madagundong, which means "having a rumbling or thunderous sound". This refers to the noise coming from the Kay Albaran river in the village of Capantayan. This was initially the place on which the town was to be built. However, due to the floods caused by the frequent overflowing of the river, the town was later relocated to its present site.

Incidentally, Maragondon has three foundation dates, namely:

Maragondon belonged to the corregimiento of Mariveles (now part of Bataan) until 1754, when Spanish governor general Pedro Manuel de Arandia (1754–1759) abolished the politico-military administration and restored Maragondon to Cavite province. Alongside Silang, the town's territory was very large during its early decades.

In the second half of the 19th century the towns of Ternate, Magallanes, Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo (formerly Bailen), Alfonso, and Naic were mere barrios of Maragondon. Ternate was the first town to attain full independence on March 31, 1857, under an agreement signed by Tomas de Leon, Felix Nigosa, Pablo de Leon, Florencio Nino Franco and Juan Ramos in behalf of the people of Ternate.

Furthermore, Bailen (now Gen. Aguinaldo) and Alfonso seceded from Maragondon in 1858. Naic then severed as a town in 1869. Magallanes was the last of the villages to attain independence, having been founded on July 15, 1879, under an agreement signed by Crisostomo Riel representing Maragondon, and by Isidro Bello and company representing Magallanes.

During the Philippine Revolution on May 4, 1897, revolutionary leader Andres Bonifacio and his brother Procopio Bonifacio were tried and sentenced to death by a military court that convened in the house of one of the town's prominent personalities, Teodorico Reyes, following the Bonifacios' arrest for defying the authority of Emilio Aguinaldo. They were then held at Maragondon Church until May 10, 1897, when they were executed in the Maragondon mountain range.