Mauban Quezon

Mauban, officially the Municipality of Mauban (Tagalog: Bayan ng Mauban), is a municipality in the province of Quezon, Philippines. Spanish Franciscan missionaries established the town of Mauban around the year 1583. Frequent Moro pirate raids forced relocation of the town a few times until it finally settled at its current site in 1647. The first stone church in the town was also built around the same time. Among the early inhabitants of the town were the Dumagats, an indigenous people group that lived along the Sierra Madre Mountain range in southern Luzon. One of their village chieftains was Gat Pagil who was responsible for repulsing Moro raids on the town. Gat Pagil was said to have been already gray-haired at the ripe old age of 20. Well-respected by the locals, he was affectionately called Gat Uban (uban is the Tagalog word for gray hair). The town name of Mauban came from him. Today a bronze monument of Gat Uban stands proudly at the seawall promenade, a tribute by the town’s appreciative residents.