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Lucena, officially the City of Lucena (Filipino: Lungsod ng Lucena), is the capital city of the province of Quezon, Philippines. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 246,392 people.

History

Early history

In the 1570s, Capitan Juan de Salcedo first explored what was the province of Tayabas. 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.

The Spaniards of the 16th century called the area "Buenavista" because of its scenic beauty; several years later, the barrio was renamed "Oroquieta". A century later, Muslim pirates began terrorizing the entire Philippine coastline, and Oroquieta was not spared from the notorious raids. The barrio folks built forts along the seashores to defend it against the attacking pirates along the coast, particularly in the present-day Cotta and in Barangay Mayao, though these structures are no longer extant. Hence, the place became known as Cotta, the Spanish form of the Tagalog "kuta" ("fort"). The growth of local maritime trade facilitated in the Cotta port and the final defeat of Moro pirates plying the Luzon and Visayan waters, afforded the growth of Lucena as a town which eventually led to its being the capital of Tayabas province in 1901.