Ilustrado

They were late Spanish-colonial-era middle to upper class Filipinos, many of whom were educated in Spain and exposed to Spanish liberal and European nationalist ideals.

Stanley Karnow, in his In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines, referred to the ilustrados as the "rich Intelligentsia" because many were the children of wealthy landowners or inquilino (tenant) lessee families.

[3][6][7][8][9][10] The most prominent ilustrados were Graciano López Jaena, Marcelo H. del Pilar, Mariano Ponce, Antonio Luna and José Rizal, the Philippine national hero.

Rizal's novels Noli Me Tangere ("Touch Me Not") and El Filibusterismo ("The Subversive") "exposed to the world the injustices imposed on Filipinos under the Spanish colonial regime".

However, in 1872, nationalist sentiment grew strongest, when three Filipino priests, José Burgos, Mariano Gomez and friar Jacinto Zamora, who had been charged with leading a military mutiny at an arsenal in Cavite, near Manila, were executed by the Spanish authorities.