The pediment relief is San Joaquin Church's most distinctive feature, and the reason it draws visitors and scholars from across the Philippines. The carved scene shows Spanish soldiers in formation, their Filipino interpretation giving the figures a slightly flattened, narrative quality that art historians classify as folk art rather than academic sculpture. The composition fills the triangular space of the pediment completely, framing the church entrance with military drama. Below and around this scene, three retablos of carved limestone -- formerly painted in polychrome but now bare -- line the interior. The retablos and pediment together represent one of the most cohesive programs of stone carving in any Philippine church, all executed in the local limestone that gives the carvings their warm, porous texture.

Construction of San Joaquin Church was completed in 1869 under the direction of Augustinian friars during the late Spanish colonial era. The choice to depict the Battle of Tetouan -- fought only nine years before the church's completion -- suggests the friars were eager to celebrate contemporary Spanish victories, not just biblical narratives. Spain's campaign in Morocco in 1859-1860 had been a source of national pride, and the Augustinians in distant Iloilo wanted their church to participate in that celebration. The decision reveals the colonial church as a vehicle for imperial messaging as much as spiritual guidance. That the message was rendered by Filipino hands in Filipino stone, creating something neither fully Spanish nor fully local, captures the layered identity of colonial Philippine art.

The convent adjacent to San Joaquin Church was reduced to ruins during World War II. What remains includes a well and a kiln that were once used for baking -- humble artifacts that outlasted the grand structure surrounding them. The ruins have become part of the church's identity, their crumbling walls offering a counterpoint to the intact facade. The National Historical Institute designated the church a National Historical Site in 1980, and on January 19, 2019, the parish celebrated the 150th anniversary of the church's completion. For that occasion, parishioners and priests collaborated on a careful restoration of the interior, working to recover the original designs of the tabernacle, high altar, and side altar retablos. Archbishop Jose Romeo O. Lazo formally dedicated the restored church on January 18, 2019.

San Joaquin sits on the southern coast of Panay Island, facing the open waters that separate the Visayas from Mindanao. The church's position at the edge of this coastline gives it a quality of outpost -- a permanent stone statement in a landscape shaped by water and wind. The National Museum of the Philippines has declared it a National Cultural Treasure, recognizing both the quality of its stone carving and its rarity as a surviving example of narrative relief sculpture in Philippine ecclesiastical architecture. The Battle of Tetouan pediment remains the only known depiction of a specific military engagement on any church facade in the Philippines. It is a monument to the strange trajectories of colonial culture: a North African battle, filtered through Spanish pride and Filipino artistry, preserved in the limestone of a Visayan island.