Origin and History of Bagacay by: Bambie Hiwaga

Barangay Bagacay is the second biggest barangay, next to Tamban, the largest, in the municipality of Tinambac, Camarines Sur. It lies as boundary between the municipalities of Calabanga and Tinambac, hence the first and outermost barangay between the two towns. It is 10 kilometers southwest of the Poblacion of Tinambac, and is 27 kilometers northeast of the City of Naga.

It is bounded on the northeast by the 10 kilometer coasts of San Miguel Bay and and Caaluan River; on the west by Bugiw eastuaries, on the southwest by Tigman River, and on the east by Catiksan River and the mountain ranges of Mount Isarog.It has an area of about 700 hectares with several sitios, namely, Tigman, May-Putol, Cut-Doze, Banat, and Iraya.

It is one of the oldest barangays of Tinambac which origin dates back to the 1900. According to first-hand accounts, Bagacay was so called, or had acquired its name, because its territory was filled overwhelmingly by small decorative bamboos known as barabagacay. These plants are still in fact numerously growing at the outskirts of the place and are feared to vanish and become extinct due to reckless cutting of trees and disregard of environmental conservation. The barabagacay are small bamboo plants that can be used like the Chinese bamboos used for landscape beautification, and in fact decorative plants inside buildings and homes. At the resorts in Naga and Carolina, these plants are used for its attractive landscapes.The place was totally wooded and interspersed with bulonchina, marurugi and marubal, all bamboos of different varieties. It has large swamp lands which are now developed into productive fishponds with a total land area of about 100 hectares.

Among the first inhabitants of this place were the families of San Andres, Sabido, Dazal,Patriarca, the Cantors and the Corporals. The first Barrio Lieutenant was Felix San Andres. Migrants from Catanduanes, Albay and Southern Tagalog Provinces like Batangas and Quezon were the most dominant following the opening and construction of road to the Poblacion of Tinambac which passed through Old Calaluan sometime in the 1920’s. The road to the Poblacion via the sides of the mountains ranges and along barangays Mananao, Bulaobalite, and Sta. Cruz was constructed after the liberation in the 1950’s.The Calauan route was abandoned because it crosses the wide Caaluan River, and it would require about one kilometer bridge to make a traverse to the other side.

A private port was constructed sometime in the 1950’s to provide docking services to motorboats transporting passengers and merchandize to Siruma, and the other coastal barangays of Tinambac, namely, Sulpa, Cagliliog, Buenavista, San Vicente, Daligan, Bani, and many other places on the other side of San Miguel Bay. It was due to this port which gave rise to the increase of trade and commerce in Barangay Bagacay. It had further increased the population.Being thickly wooded and inhabited by highly superstitious villagers, Bacagay was known for numerous weird and mysterious stories. People here were witness to the carbungko, the eerie large forest coal-fire that clings to the large trunks of the trees during darkest nights of the year when the new moon stays longest because of winter equinox.

They also relate of the santilmo, another weird nocturnal phenomena on lands where ownership or boundary disputes occur. They emerged also in the woods and in seashores specially during rainy nights. They were a bulge of flames and combustion diving and leaping upon the ground without direction. They fade away as soon as some human beings would come to their direction.The late science professor Bejamin DyLlacco explained that these atmospheric phenomena are the “relatives” of thunder and lightning. Lightning, he said, occur due to the contact of electrically charged ions from the ionosphere with the electrically charged ions on the surface of the earth when they are wet by rain that serves as conductor.

Similarly these carbungko and santilmo are the contact of inert gases from the outermost layer of air surrounding the earth with the combustible gases also present on the ground during the cold dark nights, the former having slow combustion like coal-fire, while the latter having rapid blazing effects. The inert gases include those ozone gases that bleach the kinula (bleacing of the clothes soaked in detergents) of your mothers laid out during midnights, or the pamasma (a certain medicinal concoction) also exposed during midnights because it is only during this time of the day that these inert gases pass through the atmosphere down to the earth’s surface, Mr. DyLlacco explained. But our lolos and lolas would tell you that these creepy and ghostly creatures in the woods and along seashores at night are the condemned souls of land-grabbers, or persons who committed heinous crimes, but were sent back by Satan on earth in flames and with coal-fires on their backs and suffer further humiliation when they are identified. 

Thus people saw at nights the bonfires of the kaingeros on the slopes of Mount Isarog, they would again recall these mysterious accounts. From the distance of their home to the dying embers of the forest fires of the kaingeros, they thought rather of the tales behind the carbungko and santilmo as the condemned souls.

Brave and courages natives wanted to confront the weird creatures and other wild characters of the lore on the condemned but unrepentant souls of the most atrocious elements still roaming around with innocent people.

Not only those lifeless sylvan flashing elements were in the folklore of the Bicolanos that were mentioned even in their science subjects in school. There were actually live creatures that inhabit the once rain forests of Mount Isarog known in the dialect as the rumurogpan (a hairy man-eating 9-feet tall male creature, half-beast and half-man) and the lakê (a 2-legged centaur). The former was a cannival with hair all over the face and body and which of course was completely nude with its abnormally big male sex organ larger than the horse’s. The creature had been spotted by not just a few, but by quite a number of people in the villages surrounding the mountain.

Today, Bagacay is still one of the flourishing barangays in Tinambac. It is the place of birth of several prominent media personalities, namely, former Vice Governor Cris Rances, Newspaper Editor Emil Saavedra, and the late radio reporter Bert Darilay.