page_title: Santa Maria, Bulacan
section_title: Barangays
hierarchical_section_title: Santa Maria, Bulacan / Geography / Barangays
context_page_description: Santa Maria, officially the Municipality of Santa Maria, is a 1st class municipality in the province of Bulacan, Philippines. According to the 2015 census, it has a population of 256,454 people. representing 7.8% of the population of the province.
  Located on the banks of the Santa Maria River, 32 kilometres north of Manila, Santa Maria has been a thriving settlement for almost four centuries. It was founded as a barrio of Bocaue in the early 17th century until it was established as an independent municipality on November 26, 1793 by the Spanish friar Francisco Dominguez Javier OFM. Known before as Santa Maria de Pandi, it is named under the patronage of the Immaculate Conception. Its administrative center, the Poblacion, forms as the historic core of the municipality. It is surrounded by four rivers and it still largely retains its 2.88 square-kilometer boundaries since the Spanish Colonial Era.
  Santa Maria, with a population of 256,454, remains by a significant margin the most populous municipality in Central Luzon, as well as the 5th most populous municipality in the Philippines. It is also the 2nd most populous local government unit in Bulacan next to San Jose del Monte City.
context_section_description: Santa Maria is composed of 24 barangays, the smallest administrative unit in the municipality. A barangay is equivalent to American village and British ward, and is headed by the barangay captain (punong barangay) and his council (kagawad) duly elected by the residents.
caption: Political map of Santa Maria.
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