I cannot speak to whether this was considered “long” or “short” throughout the entire time period, but I can hopefully contextualize this a bit to answer your first question. The Spanish Empire maintained many possessions beyond the Iberian peninsula for great lengths of time — for example, take the crown jewel of the Empire, Mexico (the Viceroyalty of New Spain), which was under Spanish control from the conquest of the Aztecs in 1521 to its independence in 1821, 300 years later (note that this does not include the entire territory of modern-day Mexico, as conquest was gradual and authority not always strong). Spain maintained its Caribbean colony of Cuba from about 1511 to 1898, a length of 387 years, and Puerto Rico for slightly longer, 1508-1898 (390 years). Most of the Spanish possessions in America were ruled for at least 100 years, and the major territories (Peru, Mexico, the Caribbean) for longer. In fact, the conquest of Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in the Iberian Peninsula, only preceded the conquest of Mexico by 29 years, so Spain had maintained her overseas colonies for nearly as long as her Iberian ones, and the unification of Castile and Aragon (usually dated to the reign of Charles I of Spain, though this is debatable) was roughly contemporaneous with the major conquests. The Philippines came slightly later, and were named after Charles’s son, Philip II of Spain.

There were colonial possessions that were occupied longer than the Philippines. The Portuguese overseas territory of Goa in India was only incorporated into the latter in 1961, and belonged to Portugal for nearly 450 years. France and the United Kingdom both currently maintain possessions in the Caribbean and the Pacific — Guadeloupe, though occupied by different colonial empires at different points, has been a colony since 1635, for some 384 years, and is currently an overseas region of France. Of course, these territories were much smaller than the Philippines, which was a major possession of Spain.

Dating other colonial possessions would be slightly more difficult. For the British, the Thirteen Colonies are relatively simple (1607-1776, 169 years), but the gradual transition of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand from possessions to self-governing entities to Dominions to independent states makes judging that length of time slightly more difficult. European African colonies varied wildly in the amount of time they were owned for — Portugal began establishing trading posts in the late 15th century, and her colonies of Angola and Mozambique only achieved independence in 1975, while French protectorates in Tunisia and Morocco lasted less than 100 years, at the risk of comparing across different types of colonial possessions.

Comparing specifically to other European colonies near the Philippines makes them older than British possessions Singapore (1819-1963, 154 years) and Hong Kong (1841-1997, 156 years). The Dutch East Indies were occupied in varying ways from 1800 (when the VOC territories were seized by the government) to 1949, though if we date Dutch colonization from the founding of Batavia in 1619 to the cession of Netherlands New Guinea in 1963, Dutch rule in Indonesia lasted 344 years, slightly longer than that of the Spanish in the Philippines.

The size and importance of the Philippines meant that its loss (and the loss of Spain’s other territories in the Pacific and the Caribbean) in the Spanish-American War had a profound impact on Spanish identity, producing the Generation of ‘98, a group of intellectuals and writers. With the loss of her final “old” colonies, Spain then turned toward Africa, managing the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco as well as the Spanish Sahara and a few other territories. These shifts can speak to the importance of the territory, which is in part due to the length of time it was occupied for.

Edit: I also wanted to add that the Philippine colonial story didn’t end there. After launching a war for independence against Spain, the Philippines were subsequently ceded by Spain to the US, who then launched a brutal war to bring the country under its rule, where it remained until 1946, which brings the total time as a colony of one power or another to 381 years (if we don’t count 1898-1902 as an independent period).