The Diwata’s Spring and the Virgin’s Well

Wala Lang

By DR. JAIME C. LAYA

MANILA, Philippines - Long before the Spanish arrival, a settlement called Namayan thrived several kilometers up the Pasig River.  Below a hill was a miraculous spring (bukál) believed to be tended by a nymph (diwatà).  The place was so revered that for generations, people laid their dead to rest on the hill and around the flowing spring. 

Martín de Goiti founded Spanish Manila in 1570 and eight years later, the Franciscans established a mission by a Namayan brook (sapà), dedicated to the Virgin’s mother.  The area thus became Santa Ana de Sapà. 

Population grew and the small mission church eventually became too small.  Parish priest Fr. Vicente Inglés, OFM, decided to build in a new location (now Plaza Calderón), on the hill above the bukál.  Construction began in 1720, the church carefully aligned with the spring on a north-south axis—north-facing main door, nave, altar mayor, sacristy, and bukál on one straight line. 

Devotion centered on Nstra. Sra. de los Desamparados (Our Lady of the Abandoned), a replica of the original in Valencia, Spain brought to Manila in 1717 by Fray Vicente.  The bukál was enclosed in a stone well within the shrine of Nstra. Sra. del Pozo (Our Lady of the Well).  The shrine image, a relieve, was in a niche at the church’s back wall, opposite the entry on today’s Lamayan Street.  The diwatà had disappeared, Mary had become guardian of the miraculous spring.

As Manila’s Lourdes, the pozo attracted multitudes, including Chinese who built a Taoist temple across the street dedicated to Pao Ong Hu (dispenser of justice) and a female deity (recourse of the desperate, counterpart of Our Lady of the Abandoned).

While pre-hispanic pilgrims converged on the diwatà’s spring, their converted descendants gathered at Our Lady’s church and well.  Writing in 1865, Franciscan historian Fr. Félix de Huerta reported, “The said lady is frequently visited by … devotees who … in the not so distant past … used to equal and even exceeded the numerous crowds of faithful who worshipped at the Sanctuary in Antipolo.”  (from the Spanish). 

Helen Mariano, whose ancestors looked after the pozo, recalls her grandaunts relating how pilgrims descended ten steps down to the water and went back up to drink or pour the healing water on themselves.  Unbelieving health authorities sealed the well in a 1920 typhoid epidemic and in a 1970s church “improvement,” the well was filled with rubble and cemented over.

All the while, residents had taken for granted bones and ceramics (including dishes, saucers, jars) uncovered when digging fence and house foundations, septic tanks.  The National Museum and enthusiasts led by Archt. & Mrs. Leandro Locsin conducted excavations in the 1960s, uncovering more than 200 graves at the convent patio, church parking lot, street, and surrounding yards.

They found “astonishing quantities” of superlative Chinese Sung Dynasty celadons, cobalt blue underglaze, spotted ch’ing pai, stoneware, and other precious offerings of ancient Namayans to accompany their dearly loved, in the centuries before ang bukál ng diwatà became el pozo de la Virgen
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