MANILA – The Embassy of Spain in the Philippines, in partnership with the Ayala Museum and S&R will be holding an exhibit named Tabacalera: Beyond Tobacco from April 21 until July 6.
Curated by Prof. Martin Rodrigo, historian from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain, the exhibit showcases artifacts and stories from one of the oldest tobacco companies in the world. The exhibit aims to bridge the gap between modern Filipinos and Spain, showing a past that the two countries shared.
The exhibit will show the history of the company through carefully selected items from the Tabacalera coffers – images, maps, books, art, and antiques on loan from Filipino and Spanish institutes and private collectors.
It is a showcase of how life was during Tabaclera’s golden years; its Manila and Barcelona offices, the hacienda life in Ilocos, Tarlac and Negros, its various investments and over one hundred years of history for a company that went through the best – and worst – days of the Philippines.
Last April 23, a curator’s talk was held at the Ayala Museum headed by Prof. Rodrigo and Marçal Sanmartí, who is taking his dissertation on the Compañía General de Filipinas at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. The talk expounded on the contents of the exhibit and gave a concise history of Tabacalera, sharing stories on the amount of research it took to complete the exhibit.
The Compañia General de Tabacos de Filipinas or Tabacalera, established in 1636, is a tobacco monopoly that resided in the country between the nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. It is the maker of the famous cigar brand, La Flor de La Isabela, coveted as much as Cuban Cohiba cigars.
