Every October, Angeles City in Pampanga celebrates Fiestang Kuliat, its city fiesta in honour of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary (La Naval). It is the biggest month on the Angeleño calendar — a season of novenas, street fairs, food and music that builds toward the fiesta weekend, in the city best known to the rest of the country as the birthplace of sisig.
The fiesta’s loudest tradition is Tigtigan Terakan keng Dalan — “music and dancing in the streets” — the huge open-air street party that takes over Balibago on the last Friday of October. Around it sit the older, quieter fixtures of Kuliat: the calesin (tilbury) races, the Santacruzan processions, and in recent years the Kambal Festival, the city’s celebration of twins, which has taken the calesin race into its programme.
Fiestang Kuliat in photos, 2011–2022
This gallery gathers a decade of my October coverage in Angeles — the Tigtigan Terakan street parties of 2011, the calesin races and city scenes of 2012–2013, and the Kambal Festival of 2022. Click any photo to open the original post.
Angeles sits in the heart of Kapampangan country — the same city season that ends October in Angeles flows into December’s Giant Lantern Festival in neighbouring San Fernando, and the Holy Week Maleldo rites each spring.