Naga City, is a component city in the province of Cebu, Philippines. According to the 2015 census it has a population of 115,750. In the 2016 electoral roll, it had 63,755 registered voters.

The city of Naga lies within the Cebu metropolitan area.

This City is often confused by visitors coming primarily from Luzon and other parts of the country not near to Central Visayas with the city of Naga in Camarines Sur.

History

Even before the coming of the Spanish colonial government, Naga, which was then a flourishing village off the riverbanks of the storied Naga River, was already a thriving community. As pointed in the book of Prof. Danilo M. Gerona, a local historian, Naga was then a premier village with a comparatively sophisticated weaponry and surprisingly advanced technology. The name “Naga” derived its origin from the narra trees, which were then in abundance. Thus, in 1573, when the Spanish Troops arrived led by Capt. Juan de Salcedo, the colonizers were amazed to find a community with a fairly well advanced culture. In 1574, Captain Pedro de Chaves founded Ciudad de Nueva Caceres in honor of Don Francisco de Sande, then governor of the province and native of the City of Caceres in Spain. Naga, the premier native village and then a Spanish pueblo, formed part of the Spanish colonial city. Nueva Caceres remained the capital of Ambos Camarines provinces and later of the Camarines Sur province until the formal creation of the independent component city of Naga under the Philippine Republic. Naga’s birth as a chartered city formally took place on December 15, 1948 by virtue of Republic Act No. 305. Rep. Juan Q. Miranda sponsored this legislative act which put flesh into the city’s bid to become among the only few independent component cities in the country.CIUDAD NIN NAGA has been for hundred of years a center of trade, education and culture, and the seat of governmental and ecclesiastical jurisdiction.In 1573, on his second expedition to this region, the great conquestador, Juan de Salcedo, discovered here a flourishing Bikol Village called Naga, because it is said, of an abundance of Narra (naga in Bikol) trees about the place. In 1575 (200 years before the start of the American Revolution), Capt. Pedro de Chavez, the commander of the garrison left behind by Salcedo, founded on the site of the present business center (across the river from the original Naga) a Spanish city which he named Ciudad de Caceres, in honor of Francisco de Sande, the governor general and a native of the city of Caceres in Spain. It was still by this name that it was identified in the papal bull of August 14, 1595 that erected the See of Caceres (together with those of Cebu and Nueva Segobia) and made it the seat of the new bishopric.In time, Spanish city and native village merged into one community and became popularly known as Nueva Caceres, obviously to distinguish it from its namesake in Spain. It had a city government as prescribed by Spanish law, with an ayuntamiento and cabildo of its own. At the beginning of the17th century, there were only five other ciudades in the Philippines.With the advent of the American rule, it was reduced to a municipality. In 1919, it lost its Spanish name, when, by law, it became officially known as Naga. It acquired its present city charter in 1948, and its city government was inaugurated on December 15 of the same year.The bishops of Caceres occupied a unique place in the Philippine Catholic hierarchy during most of the Spanish regime. By virtue of the papal brief of Gregory XIII, ecclesiastical cases originating in the Spanish Indies, which ordinarily were appealable to the Pope, were ordered to be terminated there and no longer elevated to Rome. Decisions of bishops were made appealable to the archbishop and those of the latter to the bishop of the nearest see. Thus, in the Philippines, the decisions of the archbishop of Manila were subject to review by the bishop of Caceres whose jurisdiction then extended to the province of Tayabas. In this sense, bishops of Bikol were delegates of the Pope and could be considered primates of the Church of the Philippines.This was the reason why bishops of Caceres and archbishop of Manila were sometimes engaged in interesting controversies in the sensational Naga case and in such issues as canonical visitation and the secularization of the parishes.As papal delegate, Bishop Francisco Gainza, then concurrently bishop of Caceres, sat in the special ecclesiastical tribunal which passed upon the civil authorities' petition to divert Fathers Burgos, Gomez, and Zamora of their priestly dignity. Gainza did not only refuse the petition but also urged their pardon.Situated at the center of the Bikol peninsula and surrounded on all sides by rich agricultural, forest and fishing areas, Naga is also at the confluence of the Naga and Bikol Rivers. Thus, it has always been an ideal place for trade, and as center for schools and church and government offices.In downtown Naga, just opposite Naga's tallest structure, the Holiday Hotel, you will see a park situated between Peñafrancia Ave. and Elias Angeles Street, and right in the middle of it the lofty monument to Bikol's Quince Martires. Actually, Bikol's martyrs of freedom number in the thousands but these fifteen have been specially singled out as symbols of the rest because on January 4, 1897, just five days after Dr. Rizal was executed, eleven of them were likewise shot at Bagumbayan field in Manila. The others died for country in exile or in prison.They were avenged, however, at the Peñafrancia Fiesta, September 18, 1898 for corporals Elias Angeles and Felix Plazo convinced their fellow members of the guardia civil not to allow the same fate to befall them as had befallen the Daet patriots. So on the night of the fiesta they attacked the Spanish officers' quarters, routed them and then did battle with the rest of the Spanish community who had established themselves in the convento of the historic San Francisco Church (just opposite the Quince Martires monuments, its old bell tower can still be seen). When word of this startling defeat reached Partido, Legazpi, Sorsogon and Catanduanes, all Spanish forces and governmental men withdraw to Iloilo. Sad to say, in January 1900, the American imperialistic forces invaded Camarines Sur and headed for Naga. However, Naga resident General Ludovico Arejola, organized a large guerilla army and fought the Americans at Agdangan, Baao. Afterwards he set up a camp in the mountains of Minalabac and held out for a full year and two and two months more, until rampant sickness forced the surrender of himself and his men in a formal ceremony in Naga on March 31, 1901. In late December 1941, Naga was again put under another foreign power, Japan, but once again on May 1 and 2, 1942; the combined guerilla forces of the province smashed their way into Naga. Their main purpose in doing so was to liberate the 30 American prisoners in the provincial jail. At the risk of their own lives and those of their relatives and neighbors not only freed, but also sheltered their former colonizers in the mountain. On April 9, 1945, a large number of Major Juan Q. Miranda's guerillas again attacked the Japanese forces in Naga. American planes also heavily bombed the city. The American army arrived finally on April 27. Naga became a chartered city in 1948. On the first decade of 1700's the first chapel to the Virgin Mary of Peñafrancia was constructed just above the city and along the banks of Naga River that is the avenue upon which the image is triumphantly borne from downtown Naga on the afternoon of Peñafrancia Saturday. This devotion is an authentic regional fiesta and the population of the city more than doubles on those days as pilgrims come from all over the six Bicol provinces as well as many from Manila and other distant places to share in this great religious experience and festival.Three (3) of the most venerable institutions and structures in Naga are clustered together along the upper part of Elias Angeles Street. They are the Cathedral that begun in the year 1816, the Holy Rosary Seminary and the Colegio de Sta. Isabel. Founded in 1793 as both a college and a seminary, The Holy Rosary Seminary is one of the oldest schools in the republic. It educated literally thousands of the sons of all the leading families from as far north as Mauban, Quezon, and as far south as Leyte. In 1925, the laymen’s department was separated from the seminary and became the Camarines Sur Catholic Academy, which in turn, in 1940 became the Ateneo de Naga. Naga Parochial School took over the training of the elementary boys in 1948.In 1868, the first normal school for women in the entire Orient was established in Naga as the Colegio de Sta. Isabel. Each parish in Bikol was required to send at least one pensionada to study there that they might be trained to run the parochial school in their own home place. The colegio’s present day population of more than 5,000 shows the appreciation of the Bikol people for its century of work for Bikol youth.The University of Nueva Caceres, adjacent to Naga’s Centro, is the first university in southern Luzon. Over 9,000 students are being trained “non scholae ser vitae” in its halls. Students come from as far south as Zamboanga to attend its law, engineering, commerce, liberal arts courses. Its Bicol Museum is the best in the entire Peninsula.

Naga has a multitude of other fine schools: Naga College Foundation, Camarines Sur National High School, Bicol College of Arts and Trade, Naga City Science High School, St. Joseph School, Hope Christian School, Philippine Union College and many energetic business and fashion academies.

Cityhood

During the 11th Congress (1998–2001), Congress enacted into law 33 bills converting 33 municipalities into cities. However, Congress did not act on a further 24 bills converting 24 other municipalities into cities.During the 12th Congress (2001–2004), Congress enacted into law Republic Act No. 9009 (RA 9009), which took effect on 30 June 2001. RA 9009 amended Section 450 of the Local Government Code by increasing the annual income requirement for conversion of a municipality into a city from ₱20 million to ₱100 million. The rationale for the amendment was to restrain, in the words of Senator Aquilino Pimentel, "the mad rush" of municipalities to convert into cities solely to secure a larger share in the Internal Revenue Allotment despite the fact that they are incapable of fiscal independence.After RA 9009 went into effect, the House of Representatives of the 12th Congress adopted Joint Resolution No. 29, which sought to exempt from the ₱100 million income requirement in RA 9009 the 24 municipalities whose cityhood bills were not approved in the 11th Congress. However, the 12th Congress ended without the Senate having approved Joint Resolution No. 29.During the 13th Congress (2004–2007), the House of Representatives re-adopted former Joint Resolution No. 29 as Joint Resolution No. 1 and forwarded it to the Senate for approval. However, the Senate again failed to approve the Joint Resolution. Following the suggestion of Senator Aquilino Pimentel (Senate President), 16 municipalities filed, through their respective sponsors, individual cityhood bills. The 16 cityhood bills each contained a common provision exempting it from the ₱100 million income requirement of RA 9009 –"Exemption from Republic Act No. 9009. — The City of x x x shall be exempted from the income requirement prescribed under Republic Act No. 9009."On 22 December 2006, the House of Representatives approved the cityhood bills. The Senate also approved the cityhood bills in February 2007, except that of Naga, Cebu which was passed on 7 June 2007. These cityhood bills lapsed into law on various dates from March to July 2007 after President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo failed to sign them.Cityhood was ratified in a plebiscite on 2 September 2007. The point of law at issue in 2007 was whether there had been a breach of Section 10, Article X of the 1987 Constitution, which provides –No province, city, municipality, or barangay shall be created, divided, merged, abolished or its boundary substantially altered, except in accordance with the criteria established in the local government code and subject to approval by a majority of the votes cast in a plebiscite in the political units directly affected.– and in each case the established criteria were far from met.In November 2008, Naga and 15 other cities lost their cityhood after the Supreme Court of the Philippines granted a petition filed by the League of Cities of the Philippines, and declared unconstitutional the cityhood law (RA 9491) which had allowed the town to acquire its city status. The Supreme Court ruled that they did not pass the requirements for cityhood.On 10 December 2008, the 16 cities affected acting together filed a motion for reconsideration with the Supreme Court. More than a year later, on 22 December 2009, acting on said appeal, the Court reversed its earlier ruling as it ruled that "at the end of the day, the passage of the amendatory law" (regarding the criteria for cityhood as set by Congress) "is no different from the enactment of a law, i.e., the cityhood laws specifically exempting a particular political subdivision from the criteria earlier mentioned. Congress, in enacting the exempting law/s, effectively decreased the already codified indicators. Accordingly cityhood status was restored.But on 27 August 2010, the 16 cities lost their city status again, after the Supreme Court voted 7-6, with two justices not taking part, to reinstate the 2008 decision declaring as "unconstitutional" the Republic Acts that converted the 16 municipalities into cities. A previous law required towns aspiring to become cities to earn at least ₱100 million annually, which none of the 16 did.On 15 February 2011, the Supreme Court made another volte-face and upheld for the third time the cityhood of 16 towns in the Philippines.Finally, on 12 April 2011, the Supreme Court, in an en banc ruling delivered in Baguio City, affirmed the finality of the constitutionality of the 16 cityhood laws by resolving that:We should not ever lose sight of the fact that the 16 cities covered by the Cityhood Laws not only had conversion bills pending during the 11th Congress, but have also complied with the requirements of the LGC prescribed prior to its amendment by R.A. No. 9009. Congress undeniably gave these cities all the considerations that justice and fair play demanded. Hence, this Court should do no less by stamping its imprimatur to the clear and unmistakable legislative intent and by duly recognizing the certain collective wisdom of Congress. WHEREFORE, the Ad Cautelam Motion for Reconsideration (of the Decision dated 15 February 2011) is denied with finality.On 28 June 2011 the Supreme Court directed the Clerk of Court to issue the entry of judgment on the cityhood case of 16 municipalities.