Like the flowers Baguio City celebrates in February, its Panagbenga Festival blooms bigger every year.
Before the flower festival was founded 22 years ago, Baguio City Mayor Mauricio Domogan recalled how the local government collected only about P13 to 15 million in business tax. “But when we started this festival, it jumped up to P58 million,” he shared. Thanks to tourists flocking to the City of Pines not only during its month-long festival, but also in summer months and Christmas season.
This year’s Panagbenga Festival has seen larger crowd, more floats and street dance contingents and bigger celebrity guests—despite the small budget allocated for it. The city government, as prescribed by the Baguio Flower Festival Foundation, Inc. (BFFFI), only allots P4 million for the event, according to Mayor Domogan.
“It is a festival that, despite its magnitude, we are not actually putting a big budget because of our limitation,” he shared.
In fact, the cash prizes for its Grand Float Parade competition, one of the major contests, are smaller compared with the amount participants spend to join. The cost for floats decked with fresh flowers range from P150,000 to P800,000, depending on the size and materials among others. The grand prize meanwhile for the winning float is only P250,000.
Yet, more and grander floats joined in Panagbenga Festival 2017’s parade—all for the honor of joining the event.
“Today there is no question that it was a lot of improvement than the previous float parades,” Mayor Domogan said during an intimate press conference. “I noticed there has been an improvement on the quality and beauty of all the floats that did participate today.”
According to BFFFI co-chairman and Baguio Country Club general manager Anthony De Leon, the float parade is open for everyone, as long as they follow the requirement that is the float should be made of 95 percent fresh flowers.
The festival organization opened a category for small floats this year, in a bid to entice small and medium companies and organizations to join. A successful move as a total of 23 floats—the most number of competitors so far—competed for the two categories (Small and Big).
The “Beauty of the Wild” themed flower float of NLEX/SCTEX took home the top spot, while the candy-colored float of Sitel and the blooming entry of Department of Tourism got the second and third prize, respectively, in the Big Float category.
The roaring tiger on Maybank’s float served as a lucky charm as the bank won first place in Small Float category. Coca-Cola’s red float bagged the second prize and Asus Zenfone’s entry was named third place.
Aside from the winning flower floats, some of the participants that received load cheers from the crowd were GMA Regional TV’s float where Alden Richards and Maine Mendoza were on board, Wedding Memories’ which had Carrot Man Jeyrick Sigmaton as passenger, Tropicana’s which had Miss International 2016 Kylie Verzosa, and ABS-CBN’s float with Enchong Dee and Bea Alonzo.
For the Street Dance competition, on the other hand, the organizers introduced the Open category, wherein participants outside the Cordillera region can join. Aside from schools and universities in Baguio, there were contingents all the way from La Union, Pangasinan and Nueva Vizcaya that danced their way from Panagbenga Park to Melvin Jones football grounds.
Winners in the Street Dance contest were Apolinario Mabini Elementary School (Elementary School division), Baguio City National High School (High School division), and Pugo Catholic School (Open division).
De Leon said the decision to open more categories in the two major competitions is aimed to encourage other festivals to join, thus making Panagbenga—the mother of all festivals in Luzon—an inclusive event.
To further deepen ties, Baguio City’s sister cities and municipalities from South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Quezon Province, Isabela, Pangasinan and Ilocos Sur also joined in the parade.
The month-long festivities were once again successful and well attended. Considering that a rough estimate of two million watched the two major events, the festival went on orderly—a large part of it thanks to the crowd control team composed of Baguio City Police, Criminology students of University of Cordilleras and University of Baguio, Boys Scouts and Girl Scouts, and other civic organizations.
“For me, the success of this festival is if we are able to make people feel this is their festival, and they feel happy that they can contribute, (Panagbenga) will go on,” enthused Mayor Domogan.
Mayor Domogan, De Leon and the rest of the organizers believe that the essence of Panagbenga is the pride and honor it brings to the people—in and out of Cordillera region—who work hard to make it a blooming festival as the years go by.
Photos: Bernadette Lunas
