Description

The Spanish galleon San Clemente on the Acapulco-Manila trade route brought 200 ounces of Cuban tobacco seeds to the shores of the Philippine islands. These exquisite seeds propitiously found their way into the hands of the Spanish missionaries. Aside from sowing the seeds of the Catholic faith, the Spanish friars took it upon themselves to cultivate the tobacco seeds in Cagayan Valley, Isabela, a fertile region north of Manila, named after Queen Isabela of Spain.

With land as rich and climate as favorable as that of Cuba’s, tobacco-growing soon flourished throughout the Philippine archipelago and gave birth to a burgeoning cigar-making industry under colonial Spain.