De Venecias — The Poetry of Progress

 By: Z.J Ortigoza

THE De Venecias’ legacy is already etched in stone — as enduring as the tablets of Mount Sinai on which God carved the Ten Commandments. In the Pearl of the Orient Seas, their name has become a beacon of progress, their good works reverberated from the hometown shores to the national stage.

HISTORIC. After 90 years the historic link that will also ease the gridlock on the stretches of the highway in Dagupan and Binmaley is being rebuilt. The new Calmay Bridge rises as the spiritual successor to the Franklin Bridge, a landmark of the American era destroyed by floods in 1935.

 Former five-time Speaker Jose de Venecia, Jr. is revered for championing peace, economic reform, and global diplomacy. Congresswoman Gina de Venecia is celebrated for her compassion and tireless advocacy for women, children, and families. And former Congressman Christopher “Toff” de Venecia represents a new generation of leadership — a visionary champion of the country’s creative industries.

Today, the De Venecias are painting two dreams into reality — the new Calmay Bridge and the Edades and Bernal Cultural Center and Museum — masterpieces in motion, crafted to connect communities and inspire lives. The new multi-million pesos infrastructure, once known as the Franklin Bridge during the American era, was lost to a devastating flood in 1935. Nearly a century later, its resurrection has begun under the leadership of former Fourth District Representative Toff de Venecia. When completed, the bridge will connect the two island barangays of Calmay and Carael in Dagupan City — transforming the daily lives of nearly 20,000 residents and revitalizing the city’s local economy. “The new Calmay Bridge will increase commercial activities in the two island barangays of Calmay and Carael, and contribute to the overall economic growth of Dagupan City,” former Rep. Toff said.

CALMAY BRIDGE

 According to the Department of Public Works and Highways, the bridge will form part of the Dagupan–Mangaldan Circumferential Road. Stretching 411.15 lineal meters, it will feature four lanes with a total width of 24.74 meters — a modern conduit of mobility and progress. Once completed, the bridge will finally ease the daily gridlock of vehicles choking the Pangasinan–Zambales Road particularly that of Dagupan and Binmaley’s highway — a long-awaited reprieve for thousands who endure traffic jams or risk perilous boat rides across the river during storms.

NEW LANDMARK. Dagupan City breaks ground on the ₱150-million Edades–Bernal Cultural Center and Museum, a new landmark honoring its two celebrated sons’ National Artists Victorio Edades and Salvador Bernal and envisioned to spark Pangasinan’s creative renaissance.

For generations of commuters and families, this is more than infrastructure. It is a long-cherished dream taking shape — a bridge between hardship and hope. Just a few kilometers away, another dream rises — not from steel, but from spirit.

EDADES AND BERNAL CULTURAL CENTER AND MUSEUM

 Through Republic Act No. 11726, authored by former Congressman Toff de Venecia, the Edades-Bernal Cultural Center and Museum is taking form in Dagupan City. More than a monument, it is a sanctuary of imagination — a tribute to two of Dagupan’s luminous sons: Victorio Edades, the Father of Modern Philippine Painting and National Artist for Painting (1976), and Salvador Bernal, the Father of Philippine Theater Design and National Artist for Theater and Design (2003). Here, the walls will speak. Every gallery will pulse with the rhythm of a province reclaiming its creative heart. It is a place where young and local artists will find their wings — and where the spirits of the two luminaries will live on, brushed across canvases and woven into every stage curtain.

 “The future is bright, and the future is creative,” Toff de Venecia said.

“With this cultural institution, Dagupan will have its ultimate platform — a home for art, for identity, for the stories that shape us.” The ₱150-million project is a collaboration between the Dagupan City Government and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) — the city providing the land, the NCCA funding the dream. Phase 1, backed up by ₱50 million interceded by  Senator Pia Cayetano from the national government, focuses on the bored pile foundation. From the patriarch who pursued peace, to the matriarch who gave politics a human face, to the scion who believes art is the new language of nation-building — the De Venecias have transformed leadership into a generational craft. And in PD4 (Pangasinan District 4), where rivers meet the sea and the tide carries both memory and promise, their legacy endures — not merely as a record of power or policy, but as what it has always been: The Poetry of Progress.