Photo shows the stone plaza arch built in 1927. During the Spanish regime, the Jaro plaza assumed a festive mood every Thursday, the town''s market day. Within the square were put up make-shift stalls of bamboo and nipa where assorted goods, chiefly textiles (jusi and piña), earthenwares, baskets, mats, straw hats, coarse cakes of sugar and rice, citrus and vegetables were sold. Jaro, blessed with a good port along the 40-mile Salog river, was one of the most important market towns of the province along with Iloilo, Arevalo and Oton. Jaro is known as "a city with in a city" for it has its own municipal hall, telecommunication station and post office, a university (Central Philippines University), a college (San Jose College), a hospital (Iloilo Mission), a rice experiment station, a public market and two churches (one Catholic and the other Evangelical), when Legazpi came to Panay in 1596, Salog was already "a Thriving community of Malays and Indonesians with painted bodies, using iron tools and weapons, porcelain wares from Siam and China, wearing silk and damask and adorning themselves with gold earrings, bracelets and beads of cornelian and glass," according to a brochure on the province, "Iloilo: a heritage of Greatness". Iloilo, 1968.