Lucena

Lucena (IPA: [lʊˈsɛna] loo-SEH-nɘ), officially the City of Lucena (Filipino: Lungsod ng Lucena), is a 1st class highly urbanized city in the Calabarzon region of the Philippines. According to the 2020 census, it has a population of 278,924 people.[5] It is the largest city and capital of Quezon Province wherein it is geographically situated and grouped under the province by the Philippine Statistics Authority, but in terms of government and administration, the city is politically independent from that province. It is one of the proposed metropolitan area in the Philippines. Metro Lucena is proposed to included the highly urbanized city of Lucena, as well as the towns of Candelaria, Dolores, Lucban, Pagbilao, Sampaloc, San Antonio, Sariaya, Tayabas and Tiaong. In the 1570s, Captain Juan de Salcedo first explored what was then Kalilayan, later founded as a province in 1591. The Franciscan priests Juan de Plasencia and Diego de Oropesa between 1580 and 1583 founded its town, also named "Tayabas". Tayabas was organized by the Spaniards through the Franciscan missionaries and Lucena was just one of its barrios. Tayabas became the provincial capital in 1749, renaming the province after it.[7][8]