Poblacion (from Spanish población, meaning "population"), sometimes abbreviated as Pob., is a term used in the Philippines to refer to the administrative center, downtown, old town, or commercial area of a city or municipality. It may consist of a single barangay or multiple barangays. Colloquially, the poblacion area is also referred to as the bayan (see also other definitions of bayan), plaza, or centro.
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Poblacion in the context of Barangay
The barangay (/bɑːrɑːŋˈɡaɪ/; abbreviated as Brgy. or Bgy.), historically known as the barrio, is the smallest administrative division in the Philippines. Named after the precolonial polities of the same name, modern barangays are political subdivisions of cities and municipalities, and are analogous to villages, districts, neighborhoods, suburbs, or boroughs. The term barangay is derived from balangay, a type of boat used by Austronesian peoples when they migrated to the Philippines.
All cities, including independent cities, and municipalities in the Philippines are politically subdivided into barangays, with the exception of the municipalities of Adams in Ilocos Norte and Kalayaan in Palawan, each of which contains only one barangay. Barangays are sometimes informally subdivided into smaller areas called purok (English: "zone"), or barangay zones consisting of clusters of houses for organizational purposes, and sitios, which are territorial enclaves—usually rural—located far from the poblacion. As of January 2025, there are 42,011 barangays throughout the country.
Poblacion in the context of Thitu Island
Thitu Island, also known as Pag-asa Island (Filipino: Pulo ng Pag-asa, lit. 'Island of Hope'); Đảo Thị Tứ (Vietnamese: Đảo Thị Tứ); Zhongye Island (Chinese: 中业岛/中業島; pinyin: Zhōngyè Dǎo), having an area of 37.2 hectares (92 acres), it is the second largest of the naturally occurring islands in Spratly Islands. It lies about 500 kilometers (310 mi) west of Puerto Princesa. Its neighbors are the North Danger Reef to the north, Subi Reef to the southwest, and the Loaita and Tizard Banks to the south. As the poblacion (administrative center) of the Kalayaan municipality of Palawan province in the Philippines, it also administers nearly a dozen other islets, cays and reefs in the Spratly Islands. The island is 270 nautical miles west from Palawan, Philippines.
In 1971 following a storm on the island the island was seized by the Philippines from the Republic of China (Taiwan). It is administered by the Philippines as a part of the Kalayaan municipality of Palawan Province.