Formerly known as
Bumaka (meaning "the one who fought"), the town of Gumaca was a settlement founded at the southern bank of Palanas River in the 14th century. The earliest known ruler was Lakan Bugtali. Gumaca, one of the oldest towns in Quezon Province and only several years younger than the “Noble and Ever Loyal City of Manila”, was already a well-established community even before the Spaniards came. The community had a barangay government as early as the 14th century, Lakan Bugtali being the earliest ruler according to oral tradition and Lakan Gitingan being the last. The Barangay had for its territory much of the areas now under the territorial jurisdiction of the municipalities of Atimonan, Plaridel, Lopez, Calauag, Alabat, Perez, Quezon, Unisan, Pitogo, Guinayangan and Macalelon. Located at the mouth of what is now known as Pipisik River and nestling at the foot of Sierra Madre range, it was-as it is now-also the center of local trade and commerce. It is perhaps because of this Franciscan friar, Fray Diego de Oropesa, first set foot in the community and introduced Christianity to the people with St. Diego de Alcala being proclaimed as the pueblo’s patron saint. In 1582, the first “visita” was erected and 1686 marked the establishment of a full-pledged town with independent (civil) government, the earlier ones having been headed by the ever-present Spanish friars (the municipality boasts of a still complete line-up of chief executives from 1574 down to the present). From the early 1980s to the 1990s, there were calls to rename the town as Tañada, after nationalist and past Senator
Lorenzo Tañada, with his son
Wigberto Tañada proposing to have a poll once elected congressman of
Quezon's fourth district; the renaming eventually did not push through. ==Geography==