Our Town, Our Place, Our Pride..

When you visit Cebu and head to the west coast, you will find Moalboal, a municipality gifted with rich marine resources, scenic landscape and good-natured people. And let us take you to the memory lane how this place got its name. According to legend there was a foreigner who once asked a woman with a cleft what the place was called, but unfortunately the woman misunderstood the question and thinking that she was asked about the spring. And answered ‘bukal-bukal’ (which means bubbling) but was mispronounced as Moalboal due to her speech difficulty. Today, this popular place is the one of the favourite diving spot in Cebu. The people and their language in Moalboal is populated with a mixture of native Cebuanos, Spanish and Chinese Ancestry. The locals call themselves Moalboalanons, taken from the town’s name. Majority of the Moalboalnons are Cebuanos though some claim to have come from Bohalanon descendants and a few cultural minorities found their way to the shores of Moalboal. And it is said that the first settlers was a Boholanon fugitive, Laguno Sabanal.This Boholanon fugitive brought his relatives and friends where they decided to settle in the place. Laguno Sabanal was said to have mythical powers defending the residents with his ‘oracion’ (a native prayer) driving away Moro pirates from looting and invading the place. So, when Laguno Sabanal died he was buried in the sandyshore near the bubbling fresh water spring where a large log was placed over the burial ground which until today can be found. Moalboalnons speak Cebuano as their native tongue, however Cebuanos in Moalboal has some faint differences from the speech intonation that of which spoken in the city. And since the place is surrounded with water, majority of the residence in Moalboal who live in the flat lands make their way of living by fishing while the residents in the mountainous make a living through farming. Way back in 1851, the Spanish governor passed a decree to approve the erection of the parish in Moalboal, which later on officially established San Juan Nepomuceno Parish and as the years passed eventually grew into one of the flourishing parish in the local church of Cebu.