Early history Cagayan has a prehistoric civilization with a rich and diverse culture. According to archaeologists, the earliest man in the Philippines probably lived in Cagayan thousands of years ago. In the classical era, Gattaran and Lal-lo was the home of hunter-gatherers who specialized in hunting mollusks. These hunter-gatherers have stockpiled their leftover mollusk shells in numerous sites in Gattaran and Lal-lo, until eventually, the shells formed into the largest stock of shell-midden sites in the entire Philippines. The
Atta or
Negritos were the first people in valley. They were later moved to the uplands or variably assimilated by the Austronesians, from whom the
Ibanags,
Itawes, Yogads,
Gaddangs, Irayas and Malawegs descended - who actually came from one ethnicity. These are the people found by the Spaniards in the different villages along the rivers all over Cagayan. The Spaniards rightly judged that these various villagers came from a single racial stock and decided to make the
Ibanag language the
lingua franca, both civilly and ecclesiastically for the entire people of Cagayan which they called collectively as the
Cagayanes which later was transliterated to become
Cagayanos. Cagayan was a major site for the
Maritime Jade Road, one of the most extensive sea-based trade networks of a single geological material in the prehistoric world, operating for 3,000 years from 2000 BCE to 1000 CE. Even before the Spaniards came to Cagayan, the Cagayanos have already made contact with various civilizations like the
Chinese,
Japanese and even
Indians, as evidenced by various artifacts and even the presence of minor to moderate foreign linguistic elements in the languages of the natives. Various other peoples, mainly the
Ilocanos,
Pangasinenses,
Kapampangans and
Tagalogs, as well as
Visayans,
Moros,
Ivatans, and even foreigners like the Chinese, Indians,
Arabs, Spaniards and others were further infused to the native Cagayanes to become the modern
Cagayano that we know today. The north coast was also the site of a
Wokou state when the Japanese pirate-lord Tay Fusa set up his stronghold there before its destruction during the
1582 Cagayan battles.
Spanish colonial era In 1581, Captain Juan Pablo Carreon arrived in Cagayan with a hundred fully equipped soldiers and their families by order of
Gonzalo Ronquillo de Peñaloza, the fourth Spanish
Governor-General of the Philippines. The expeditionary force was sent to explore the
Cagayan Valley, to convert the natives to
Catholicism, and to establish ecclesiastical missions and towns throughout the valley. On June 29, 1572, Spanish
conquistador Juan de Salcedo traced the northern coastline of
Luzon and set foot on the Massi (Pamplona),
Tular, and
Aparri areas.
La Provincia de Cagayan In 1583, through a Spanish
Royal Decree, the entire northeastern portion of
Luzon (specifically, all territories east of the
Cordillera mountains and those north of the
Caraballo mountains) including the islands in the
Balintang Channel were organized into one large political unit called the
La Provincia de Cagayán. The
provincia's territorial delineation encompassed the present provinces of
Batanes,
Isabela,
Quirino,
Nueva Vizcaya, including portions of
Kalinga,
Apayao,
Mountain Province,
Ifugao, and
Aurora. Its capital was
Nueva Segovia (the present municipality of
Lal-lo). These people were in turn supplemented by 155 Latin American
soldiers recruited from Mexico By the end of the 1700s,
Zambales had 9,888 native families. The
see was moved in 1758 to
Vigan because of its relative distance. The Spanish influence can still be seen in the massive churches and other buildings. By year 1818, these founding Spaniards and Mexicans blossomed into a large population of 536 Spanish-Filipino families. Of which: 6 were in
Dupax, 16 were in
Gamu, 1 was in
Abulug, and 513 were in
Lal-lo. In 1839,
Nueva Vizcaya was established as a politico-military province and was separated from Cagayan. Later,
Isabela was founded as a separate province on May 1, 1856, its areas carved from the southern Cagayan and eastern Nueva Vizcaya territories. The Spanish development of this industry affected all their economic gains in the Philippines. the Philippine economy to take a sudden downwards turn in the last months of the 1960s. Known as the
1969 Philippine balance of payments crisis, this led to social unrest throughout the country beginning with the
First Quarter Storm protests of 1970, and incidents of violence like the
Plaza Miranda bombing. Marcos responded by
vilifying his critics as "communists" and suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus through Proclamation No. 889 in August 1971, but this pushed moderate student protesters towards the radical left, and causing many of them to go home to their home provinces like Cagayan. Marcos' actions thus lead the
Marxist–Leninist–Maoist Communist Party of the Philippines to gain a significant presence in many Cagayan municipalities, although not as much in Tuguegarao itself. With only a year left in his last constitutionally allowed term as president Ferdinand Marcos placed the Philippines under
Martial Law in September 1972 and thus retained the position for fourteen more years. This period in Philippine history is remembered for the Marcos administration's record of
human rights abuses, particularly targeting political opponents, student activists, journalists, religious workers, farmers, and others who fought against the Marcos dictatorship. In Tuguegarao, Camp Marcelo Adduru became the province's main detention center for
"political detainees", who were often never formally charged with a crime, and thus technically not counted by Marcos as "prisoners." Others disappeared without the trace for daring to speak against Marcos, such as
Romeo Crismo, a teacher at Cagayan Teacher's College and St. Louis College in Tuguegarao, who criticized the
1973 Philippine constitutional plebiscite as a sham election. He disappeared without a trace in August 1980 after unknown men tried to capture him in front of his students the day before. He was later honored by having his name inscribed on the wall of remembrance of the Philippines'
Bantayog ng mga Bayani, in recognition of his martyrdom while resisting authoritarianism. During that time, logging concessions were awarded in the province by the Marcoses to Enrile and other cronies, leading to the severe degradation of forest cover in the province that contributed to widespread flooding and other environmental issues that persist today.
During the People Power revolution Cagayan saw incidents of political violence during the
1986 Philippine presidential election, including the fatal shooting by militiamen of opposition leader Euginio Coloma in the municipality of
Buguey. A number of Cagayanon politicians played parts in the
People Power Revolution two weeks after the election, and in the following one year in which the Philippines was under an
interim provisional revolutionary government between 1986 and 1987. This included Enrile, whose failed
attempt to lead a coup against Marcos was one of the precipitating events behind the revolution, and former Cagayan Governor Teresa J. Dupaya, who supported the opposition during the election and was re-appointed to her old post as Governor when the provisional government was established.
Contemporary Hotel Delfino siege Cagayan was also the site of the
Hotel Delfino Siege in
Tuguegarao, which took place on March 4, 1990, when efforts to arrest suspended governor Rodolfo Aguinaldo for supporting rebellions against the government of President
Corazon Aquino led to him storming the provincial capitol and taking hostages including his would-be arresting officer, Brigadier General Oscar Florendo of the
Armed Forces of the Philippines Civil Relations Service. The stand-off deteriorated into a series of gun-battles throughout the town, with Florendo being killed presumably in a crossfire inside the hotel and Aguinaldo managing to escape and go into hiding before later surrendering and being cleared of legal charges by winning reelection in 1992. He was later elected congressman in 1998 but was assassinated by the
New People's Army in 2001.
2020 Ulysses Flood Cagayan has been heavily impacted by changing weather patterns resulting from climate change, with the 2020 Ulysses flood being noted as one of the most severe examples. In November 2020,
Typhoon Vamco (locally known in the Philippines as Typhoon Ulysses) crossed the country, dams from all around Luzon neared their spilling points, forcing them to release large amounts of water into impounds, including Magat Dam. The dam opened all of its 7 gates at , releasing over 5,037 cubic metres (1,331,000 US gal) of water into the Cagayan River flooding numerous riverside towns. Waters under the
Buntun Bridge went up as high as , flooding the nearby barangays up to the roofs of houses. Because there was very little media coverage of the flooding in the area in the wake of the
COVID-19 lockdown in Luzon and the
Shutdown of ABS-CBN broadcasting earlier that year, residents resorted to social media to request the national government for rescue. As a result of the catastrophe, the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) indicated that it would review its protocols regarding the release of water in Magat Dam and improve its watershed. ==Geography==