Early history In local folk history about the period before the arrival of Spanish colonizers, Pasay is said to have been part of
Namayan (sometimes also called Sapa), a
confederation of
barangays which supposedly controlled territory stretching from
Manila Bay to
Laguna de Bay, and which, upon the arrival of the Spanish, eventually became known as Santa Ana de Sapa (modern day
Santa Ana, Manila). Two years later, on October 12, 1903, Act No. 942 merged Pasay with the southern municipality of Malibay, expanding its territory. With a population of 8,100 in 1903, Pasay was placed under the fourth-class category together with 9 other municipalities. Friar lands, then nationalized, were turned into subdivisions. Soon, the Pasay Real Estate Company offered friar lands as residential lots for sale or for lease to foreign investors. Postal, telegraph, and telephone lines were installed, and branches of Philippine Savings Bank were established. In 1907, a first-class road from Pasay to Camp Nichols was completed. Others were repaired including the old Avenida Mexico, now called the
Taft Avenue extension. Transportation services improved. Among the first buses plying routes to Pasay were Pasay Transportation, Raymundo Transportation, Try-tran, and Halili Transit. By 1908,
Meralco tranvia (electric
tram car) lines linked Pasay to
Intramuros,
Escolta,
San Miguel, San Sebastian, and
San Juan. Automobiles took to the streets, testing their maximum speed on Taft Avenue. On April 11, 1914, Cora Wong, a nurse at the Chinese General Hospital, became the first woman in the Philippines to fly as a passenger on a flight with
Tom Gunn in a Curtiss seaplane off Pasay Beach. Pasay eventually became a suburban area of Manila during the American occupation period. From a population of 6,542 residents, the town had a population of 18,697 by 1918, where 163 of them were Americans. Pasay was developed to be a residential area for prominent Filipino families and Americans, including future president
Manuel L. Quezon. By the 1930s, the former rural town had become a suburb of the capital city. From the 1900s up to the mid-1930s,
Philippine National Railway services reached Pasay thru its Cavite Line.
Japanese occupation World War II came and on December 26, 1941, General
Douglas MacArthur issued a proclamation declaring Manila and its suburbs (Caloocan, Quezon City, San Juan, Mandaluyong, Makati, and Pasay) an
open city. On New Year's Day 1942, Quezon, while in
Corregidor, established the
City of Greater Manila, wherein Pasay, along with other nearby towns of Rizal, was merged with Manila and
Quezon City. He called his secretary
Jorge B. Vargas and appointed him by executive order "the Mayor of Greater Manila". The mayor of Pasay was then Rufino Mateo, who was concurrently the district chief of Pasay under the City of Greater Manila, governing a town of more than 55,161. During the WWII, many Pasayeños joined in the fight against the Japanese. Jose P. Maibag, born and bred in Pasay, laid out underground networking. Carlos Mendoza, a resident of Barrio San Roque, together with 14 others, formed a mobile broadcasting station called "The Voice of Juan dela Cruz." On July 11, 1942, Japanese military police captured the group. Carling Mendoza, alias Juan de la Cruz" and other members of the group were brought to the
old Bilibid Prison and were tortured. Pasay had to redo the signs all over town, with Filipino was ordered to prevail over English. The national language became a core subject in the secondary school curriculum, while Japanese was taught as well at all levels of education. On October 14, 1943, Japan proclaimed the
Second Philippine Republic. In the meantime, food had become so scarce that prices soared. Pasay residents began to move away from the city to the provinces outside. The
Japanese occupation forces dissolved the City of Greater Manila in 1944 with the establishment of the
Philippine Executive Commission to govern occupied regions in the country,
Philippine independence Cityhood Ignacio Santos-Diaz, a congressman from the
first district of Rizal, pushed for the conversion of the town into a city and it to be named after Rizal. Republic Act No. 183 was signed into law by President
Manuel Roxas on June 21, 1947, officially establishing
Rizal City, named after
José Rizal, with Mateo Rufino as mayor and a population of 88,738. As of June 1948, the city had revenues of . But the residents could not get themselves to call their city by its new name. After two years, eight months, and twelve days of trying, the force of habit prevailed and Eulogio Rodriguez Jr., Santos-Diaz's successor, filed a bill returning the city to its original name. On June 7, 1950, President
Elpidio Quirino, once a resident of Pasay himself, signed into law Republic Act No. 437, which changed the name of Rizal City to
Pasay City. It was also in the 1940s when houses of faith were constructed in different parts of Pasay. Among them was the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows, the Libreria de San Pablo Catholic Women's League, Caritas, the nutrition center, and the grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes. In 1951, two parishes were established: the Parish of San Isidro Labrador and the Parish of San Rafael. By that time, the city was once more the aviation center of the country when what is now
Ninoy Aquino International Airport opened its doors in 1948. On June 14, 1955, Pasay regained its power to choose its leader.
Pablo Cuneta ran against one-time Mayor Adolfo Santos and became the city's first elected mayor. In 1959, he campaigned again and won against his former vice mayor, Ruperto Galvez. On December 30, 1965, Ferdinand Marcos was sworn in as President of the Philippines, with
Fernando Lopez, a resident of Pasay, as vice president. From that moment,
Imelda Romualdez Marcos, the then First Lady, became involved in national affairs. On the northern boundary of Pasay, she started filling the waterfront on Manila Bay to build the
Cultural Center of the Philippines. In the later decades she would add three more architectural showpieces on reclaimed land in Pasay: the
Folk Arts Theater,
Manila Film Center, and the
Philippine International Convention Center, and later on the PhilCite Exhibition Hall, the basis of what is now
Star City. The city, though, was also being groomed as a television center for the country, for in 1958,
ABS-CBN had opened its brand new television studios on what is now
Roxas Boulevard, later handing it over in 1969 to the
Radio Philippines Network, which used them until a 1973 fire which ruined the studios, as ABS-CBN had moved northward into Quezon City with the opening of its
current studios and offices. In 1967, Jovito Claudio won the city elections as chief executive against Pablo Cuneta. In the following year, an
assassination attempt occurred in Pasay when a Bolivian surrealist painter lunged at
Pope Paul VI, with a knife grazing his chest. In 1971, Cuneta was re-elected as city mayor of a growing city of almost 90 thousand people.
Martial law era On December 7, 1972, almost two months after martial law was declared, an assassin tried to kill Imelda Marcos in Pasay, on live television, while Mrs. Marcos was distributing prizes to the winners of the National Beautification and Cleanliness contest. She suffered some wounds and broken nails but on the whole, she emerged unscathed from that close encounter. On the second anniversary of martial law, Marcos issued Presidential Decree No. 557, declaring every barrio in the country as barangays. Not long after the decree had been put into effect, the Metropolitan Manila Commission and the Department of Local Government instructed Pasay to create its own barangays. Mayor Cuneta, in response, ordered the creation of 487 barangays. Upon the firm suggestion of
Local Government and Community Development Secretary Jose Roño, the number of barangays was cut down to two hundred, organized into several zones. On November 7, 1975, Marcos appointed the First Lady, Imelda, as
governor of Metro Manila. The federation consolidated 13 towns and 4 cities including Pasay, which was removed from Rizal province, by virtue of Presidential Decree No. 824. Pasay was the host city of
Miss Universe 1974, the first time this event had been held in the morning and in the Asia Pacific, and thus was in the international spotlight in the leadup to the pageant day. Half a decade later, the city's first family would become famous nationally in the music scene:
Sharon, the then young daughter of the mayor, broke out into the spotlight as a singer with the release of the LP ''DJ's Pet''. On December 22, 1979, along with
Manila,
Quezon City,
Caloocan, and other cities in the country, Pasay became a highly urbanized city. In 1981, LRT Line 1 opened its Pasay stations, including its
Baclaran terminal on the Parañaque border, marking a return to rapid urban rail.
EDSA people power The situation changed in the city in the immediate aftermath of the
People Power Revolution. Cuneta left his post to be replaced by two acting mayors, Eduardo Calixto and Norman Urbina, only to be reelected in 1988 and serving for three more terms, before handing over to
Jovito Claudio in 1998. Upon the end of his term, he was the city's longest ever city mayor. Claudio, himself replaced by the then vice mayor
Wenceslao "Peewee" Trinidad in
2000, saw the building of the
MRT Line 3's southern terminus in the city, linked to the LRT Line 1 along Taft Avenue, and the Pasay City General Hospital and
Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 2 were both opened to the public. All these and other projects spurred a new era of growth in the city that continues to this day. The EDSA Entertainment Complex, located just to the city's west along
EDSA, just miles from the
Baclaran,
Parañaque, for many years now is very well known for adult entertainment, including
prostitution.
Contemporary In 2006, the
SM Mall of Asia, the largest shopping center overall in the country, was opened, and the area around this mall began to grow into the city's business center in subsequent years that followed, followed by the opening of the city's biggest sports venue, the
Mall of Asia Arena. Two years later, the NAIA Terminal 3 opened its doors in July 2008, and within two years, progress blossomed in the vicinity with the opening of yet another residential and entertainment hub,
Newport City, strengthened by the construction of the NAIA Expressway in 2016. In 2007, then-Acting Mayor Allan Panaligan carried a plan to construct a new city hall located at the Central Business Park-I Island A along Macapagal Avenue. However, the plan has not come into fruition until now. In 2021, Mayor
Imelda Calixto-Rubiano announced that the city government was planning to build a new hospital facility in the city. An appropriate location for the new hospital is still to be determined given the city's geographically small area and dense population. ==Geography==