Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz (or Santacruz) may refer to:

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Philippines

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Portugal

Azores

Santa Cruz, Laguna

Santa Cruz is a first class urban municipality and capital of the province of Laguna in the Philippines. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 110,943 people.

Santa Cruz is situated on the banks of the Santa Cruz River which flows into the eastern part of Laguna de Bay. The town is bounded by the Bay on the north, by Lumban and Pagsanjan towns in the east, Pagsanjan and Magdalena towns in the south, and Pila in the west. It is approximately 87 kilometres (54 mi) from Manila via Calamba and 105 kilometres (65 mi) via Pililla, in the province of Rizal. It is accessible by land from the nearby 28 municipalities and by water through Laguna de Bay from Manila and some Rizal towns.

Santa Cruz is considered as the service and commercial center on the eastern part of the province. The town is composed of five barangays in the Poblacion area and 21 classified urban barangays. Although relatively far from the immediate urbanizing influence of Metropolitan Manila, Santa Cruz continues to progress. It is now classified as first class municipality. The present administration is headed by the Mayor Dennis Panganiban. Santa Cruz is also the seat of the provincial government since 1885, giving the municipality an additional administrative function over the entire province. It also functions as the service center for transportation, commerce, health, education, and other social services for the predominantly rural north-eastern municipalities of the province. Boosting the economy of the municipality are the incipient and fast-growing agribusiness industries such as livestock raising, horticulture and aquaculture. The town is composed of twenty-six (26) urban barangays. All barangays are being classified as urban.

Cruz

Cruz is a surname of Iberian origin, first found in Castile, Spain, but later spread throughout the territories of the former Spanish and Portuguese Empires. In Spanish and Portuguese, the word means “cross,” either the Christian cross or the figure of transecting lines or ways. For example, in the Philippines, the adopted Tagalog word is rendered to “krus” in plain usage, but the Spanish spelling survives as a surname.

The word "Cruz", as well as "Vera Cruz" ("True Cross") and "Santa Cruz" ("Holy Cross") are used as surnames and topological names. Its origin as a surname particularly flourished after the Alhambra Decree of 1492 and the increasing activities of the Spanish Inquisition, when New Christian families with Crypto-Jewish, Moorish, and/or mixed religious heritage converted to the state-enforced religion of Catholicism and subsequently fashioned and adopted surnames with unambiguous religious affiliation.

People with the surname

Laguna

Laguna (Italian and Spanish for lagoon) may refer to:

People

Places

GMA News and Public Affairs

GMA News and Public Affairs (commonly GMA News; formerly RBS News Department, GMA Radio-Television News and GMA Rainbow Satellite News) is the news and public affairs programming division of the media conglomerate, GMA Network Inc.

It produces news, public affairs, infotainment, and lately, entertainment programs for all GMA Network and GMA News TV owned and affiliated television and radio stations in the Philippines, and internationally through GMA Pinoy TV, GMA Life TV and GMA News TV International. GMA News and Public Affairs is currently headed by Marissa Flores. It is headquartered at the Ground Floor of GMA Network Center in Quezon City.

History

News division

The GMA News division traces its origin from the Republic Broadcasting System, established by Robert Stewart in 1959. Programming of its radio station, DZBB depended on mostly news reports. The station covered the eruption of Mt. Hibok-Hibok in 1951 and the election and death of the Former President Ramon Magsaysay. While RBS Channel 7 was established in 1961, it was in the 1970s that GMA became one of the most-watched television news source in the country. In 1983, Channel 7 was the first to break the news of Ninoy Aquino's death and later would be the only television station to broadcast his funeral. The channel also became the first station to broadcast the Ramos-Enrile break-away that led to the People Power Revolution (otherwise known as EDSA Revolution).