The Spanish conquerors, governing from Mexico for the crown of Spain, established a strict class system that imposed Roman Catholicism on the native population.
Their mission was implemented by the forced relocation of indigenous peoples during this time, as the uprooted natives turned to the foreign, structured religion as the new center of their lives.
The natives, called indios, generally were not taught Spanish, but the bilingual individuals, notably poet-translator Gaspar Aquino de Belén, produced devotional poetry written in the Roman script in the Tagalog language.
In the early 17th century a Chinese Filipino printer, Tomás Pinpin, set out to write a book in romanized phonetic script writer.
During the so-called 'Formative Stage', Filipino writers began to recognize the Philippines a separate entity from Spain and codified these in different form of expressions.
Among the first Filipinos to produce works is Luis Rodríguez Varela, a mestizo born in Tondo (which was province outside Manila walls but now incorporated as a district) in 1768.
The last book, a collection of poems written by various Filipino poets at that time, is still now one of the most important works in the entire corpus of Philippine Literature in Spanish.
This era also saw the publication of works by José Vergara, one of the Filipino representatives to the Spanish Cortes; and Juan Atayde (1838–1896), a military official.
More affluent families who benefited from the economic development of the Philippines during the late 19th century sent their children to Spain and Europe to take advantage of the educational opportunities offered to them by the liberalized Spanish colonial policy at that time.
They gathered around Madrid's Circulo Hispano-Filipino, founded in 1882, which then evolved into the Asociación Hispano-Filipina, and from 1888 onwards these young men started to write for the newspaper La Solidaridad, with propagandist intentions and nationalist aspirations.
If Paterno was able to introduce the Tagalogs into the world, Isabelo de los Reyes (fondly called Don Belong by contemporaries) did the same for the Ilocanos.
Considered the founder of the workers' movement in the Philippines, Don Belong founded the La actividad del obrero in 1902 that served as the main voice of the working class.
Other well-known Spanish-language writers, especially during the American period were Francisco Alonso Liongson (El Pasado Que Vuelve, 1937), Isidro Marfori, Cecilio Apóstol (Pentélicas, 1941), Fernando Ma.
Manila, Cebu, Bacolor and many other cities and towns across the Philippines had its share of writers in Spanish, most of whom flourished during the early decades of the century.
Three magazines, The Independent, Philippine Free Press and Philippine Review were published in English and Spanish.∓ In 1915, the local newspapers began publishing sections in English and after World War II and the destruction of Intramuros where a large part of the Hispanic community was based, Hispano-Filipino literature started declining and the number of books and magazines written in Spanish by Filipino authors was greatly reduced.
Although the output of Philippine literature in Spanish has diminished in later years, there are still some notable writers, like José del Mar, who won a Premio Zóbel (Zobel Prize) for his work, "Perfiles", in 1965, Francisco Zaragoza (1914–1990), author of "Castala Íntima", Guillermo Gómez Rivera, academic director of the Philippine Academy of the Spanish Language, Edmundo Farolan, director of Revista Filipina and recipient of the Premio Zóbel in 1982 for his poetry work "Tercera Primavera" or Lourdes Castrillo Brillantes, a prominent Filipino female writer, author of "80 Años del Premio Zóbel" (80 Years of the Zobel Prize), a compilation of Spanish literature written by Filipinos.