Authors of Spanish ethnographic accounts of the Philippines in the 16th century

Guido de Lavezaris (b.15?? - d. 15??) was the second Spanish Governor General of the Philippines. He succeeded Miguel López de Legazpi in 1572 as governor, and was succeeded by Francisco de Sande on August 25, 1575.

Miguel López de Legazpi (c. 1502 – August 20, 1572), also known as El Adelantado and El Viejo (The Elder), was a Spanish navigator and governor who established the first Spanish settlement in the East Indies when his expedition crossed the Pacific Ocean from the Viceroyalty of New Spain in modern-day Mexico, arriving in Cebu in the Philippine Islands in 1565. He was the first Governor-General of the Spanish East Indies, which was governed and mainly located in the Philippines. It also encompassed other Pacific islands namely Guam and the Mariana Islands. After obtaining peace with various indigenous nations and kingdoms, he made Cebu City the capital of the Spanish East Indies in 1565 and later transferred to Manila in 1571. The capital city of the province of Albay bears his name.

Miguel Juan de Plasencia () was a Spanish friar of the Franciscan Order. He was among the first group of Franciscan missionaries who arrived in the Philippines on 2 July 1578.

Pedro Chirino was a Spanish historian who spent 12 years in the Philippines as a Jesuit missionary at the beginning of the 17th century. He established a boarding school at Tigbauan in 1592, but the work he is most remembered for is his Relación de las Islas Filipinas (1604), a record of life in 17th century Philippines which, Historian Ambeth Ocampo notes, is highly regarded "by those reading early accounts of the Philippines, including Jose Rizal."

Antonio Pigafetta (c.– c. 1531) was a Venetian scholar and explorer. He joined the Spanish expedition to the Spice Islands led by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, the world's first circumnavigation, and is best known for being the chronicler of the voyage. During the expedition, he served as Magellan's assistant until Magellan's death in the Philippine Islands, and kept an accurate journal, which later assisted him in translating the Cebuano language. It is the first recorded document concerning the language.

Antonio de Morga Sánchez Garay (29 November 1559 – 21 July 1636) was a Spanish soldier, lawyer and a high-ranking colonial official for 43 years, in the Philippines (1594 to 1604), New Spain and Peru, where he was president of the Real Audiencia for 20 years.

Martín de Rada (Pamplona, Navarre, Spain June 30, 1533 - South China Sea, June 12, 1578; also known as Herrada) was one of the first members of the Order of Saint Augustine (OSA) to evangelize the Philippines, as well as one of the first Christian missionaries to visit Ming China.

Francisco Ignacio (de) Alcina SJ (also Alzina, Alçina) (February 2, 1610 – July 30, 1674) was a Spanish historian and a Jesuit missionary in the Philippines. He served as parish priest in the Visayan islands for 37 years. Most of those years were spent among the natives whom he used to call "my beloved Bisayans."