PANAGBENGA – Baguio Flower Festival
Baguio City
23 February – 3 March
It’s flower season in the city of Pines – perfect timing for an all-out fiesta in the streets. The Baguio folk take a break on these days to revel in the cool climate and the unique culture of the city. Multi-hued costumes are worn, mimicking the various blooms of the highland region (or any of its 11 ethnic tribes). These are flowerbeds – disguised, of course, as the Panagbenga parade floats.
February is the coldest month of the year in Baguio, and it is when the erstwhile hill station is at its most beautiful in the daytime, its mountains are blanketed by a cobalt sky, and at night the cold temperatures send one burrowing under thick blankets or reaching for yet another shot of single malt. Be city’s cool dime, pine trees, and picturesque mountain ranges are an essential aspect of Baguio’s century-old allure.
Twenty three years ago, the city government found a way to heat things up by creating the now-famous flower festival, otherwise known as Panagbenga. The origin of the festival is the Begnas di Panagbenga, the indigenous Kankanaey ritual celebrating the conception of rice. Its modern incarnation veers away from rice production and focuses on the region’s flower industry, and Panagbenga today is known as the ‘season of blooming’.