The diamond of the Spanish empire was of course America, which we (I'm Spanish) discovered. It was a difficult travel the way to america, months of naval crossing. Now imagine the travel to Philippines. You can't go along Africa cause it belong to Portuguese, so you must go until america, go down at southern past and then cross the Pacific and at last you arrive to Philippines. It was a hard crossing and while we were at America along four entire centuries, we just stay at Philippines for two centuries, and they were few Spanish. Now they didn't speak Spanish, the influence of England was more powerful at XIX than it was spanish one before, so they speak their own language and English too but it remains one legacy from Spanish occupation: the lat names. There are lot of Fernandez, Sanchez, Lopez, Garcia and other ones.

Hope you understand it. Sorry for my English and regards!

A very similar question came up a few months ago and I think my answer from that post still stands.

The Americas experienced an early and profound demographic crash from introduced pathogens. They then subsequently had large waves of European immigration which continually introduced/re-introduced pathogens over larger areas while also undermining indigenous lifeways at a minimum and engaging outright genocide at a maximum. The American population crashed in the 16th century, and then kept plummeting.

The Philippine population also experienced a demographic decline from disease and conflict during the initial colonial period, but then recovered. Newson's (2009) Conquest and Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines posits that a combination of the immense distance involved combined with the difficultly in actually reaching the Philippines from Spain (only a couple of sailings per year compared) and the fact that the Philippines are an archipelago all helped to insulate the population. The indigenous populations were on the rebound by the 18th century even as the Spanish colonial population remained consistently low. Even in Manila the European population was a tiny fraction of the whole. Newson cites an 1825 report estimating that out of 115-120K people in the city at the time, only 2500-3000 were European, with about 25-30K mestizos.