Rizal Day in Biñan City 2025

Biñan City commemorates Rizal Day today. It proudly claims José Rizal as its own, given that his parentage is Biñanense and that the young Rizal lived and studied in Biñan during his elementary years. Years that would later surface, remembered and reframed, in his writing.

Earlier today, I had the privilege of serving as a judge for this year’s Batang Rizal sa Biñan Declamation Contest, organized by the Biñan City Culture, History, Arts, and Tourism Office, and held at the School of Rizal Site and Museum – Jacobo Gonzales Casa Biñanense along Capinpin Street, Barangay Poblacion.

The experience left me with a lasting impression not only of the young voices interpreting Rizal, but of Rizal himself: a writer attempting something quietly radical. In Memorias de un estudiante de Manila, he repositions a Western literary form, the memoir, and uses it to narrate his lived experience as a Filipino child shaped by colonial schooling, provincial life, and early displacement. What emerges is not merely nostalgia, but curiosity, attentiveness, and an awareness of becoming.

Reading this memoir today, while living and working in Biñan, I realized that Rizal’s remembered town and my present one now overlap, unevenly, imperfectly, but meaningfully. The Filipino translation of the piece makes the experience even more personal as it connects memory in a language closer to home. Rizal’s observations on power, language, and social distinction continue to echo in our present lives.

Today, we remember Rizal the hero. But let us also remember that he was once a child who wondered, played, observed, and was still in the process of becoming.

Thank you to Shiela Gilbuena Legaspi and my co-judges Sirs Rudy and Paulo. It was an enjoyable morning! Happy Rizal Day!

(Akala ninyo BTS na naman. Mamaya pa ako mag-post tungkol sa kanila. )