Pakisama
In Spanish, a common saying is "es importante que llevas bien con la gente" which translated means "It's important to get along with other people." It's a common expression for people to be asked if their getting along with everyone else, and people are seen with more respect if "llevamos muy bien" which literally means "we carry very well", meaning we get along well.

Utang ng Loob
In Spanish, an important value to the people is "la reciprocacion", which translated literally means "the reciprocation." If someone helps someone somehow, it's very important the other person reciprocate in some manner, or he'll be labeled by the barrio (the neighborhood) as a descarado (kapal ng mukha) or sinvergüenza (walang hiya) . Doesn't it sound just like the Philippines?

I do know that these values are central to most Asian countries, especially the Malay and Chinese cultures, however perhaps these values when the Spaniards came were just reinforced among our ancestors, or who knows, maybe they had a different type of culture before the Spaniards came that was based on a completely different set of values than those above, nobody really knows.

But as an educated person, it is important to do your homework and to know what you're talking about. And now you know that the three values central to Filipino culture are exactly the same three values central to Latin culture, which is why Filipinos relate so easily to Spanish language telenovelas and why they became so popular so quickly, because their culture IS our culture, yet most Filipinos don't even realize it, because they view the Latin culture as a different culture not even realizing that it's THE SAME EXACT CULTURE of the Filipinos.

The Spanish culture goes much deeper into the Filipino than just siestas, fiestas, and catholicism.

I read somewhere some Filipinos so uneducated in saying that the only thing that connects Filipinos to Spanish telenovelas is the Galleon trade, and that's it. And that's absurd, because our connection to them is deeper than that, deeper than just the Catholic religion, it's cultural and in our daily lives and in our values, even if you don't speak Spanish. This is why it's important for me that Filipinos should learn Spanish, so that they're educated more about their own culture.

I asked my Tiíto^ Enrique while I was in Manila, "How often do you speak Spanish nowadays?" You know what my uncle told me, he said, "Well I talk to our family members in Spanish and a few family friends, but other than that, there's hardly anyone to conversate with in Spanish anymore..."

^ Tíito: Uncle, Filipinos say tito in Tagalog, which is from the Spanish "tiíto", which is "tio" "uncle" in Spanish, but with an -ito suffix added to show affection: from "tio" to "tiíto", like "guapo" to "guapito", the "ito" is added to show affection and fondness, but the accent on the second i has to be added since two i's are put together, somewhere along the centuries, for Filipinos tiíto just shortened to tito, and tiíta to tita.

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