Mangaldan already existed in 1591 as an independent municipality and owns the distinction as the third town in Pangasinan to be founded by the Dominican missionaries.
It is known to have already been a Spanish encomienda by 1591. The encomienda (Spanish pronunciation: [ekomjenda (listen)) was a Spanish labor system that rewarded conquerors with the labor of particular groups of conquered non-Christian people. The laborers, in theory, were provided with benefits by the conquerors for whom they labored, the Catholic religion being a principal benefit. The encomienda was first established in Spain following the Christian conquest of Moorish territories (known to Christians as the Reconquista), and it was applied on a much larger scale during the Spanish colonization of the Americas and the Spanish Philippines. In the conquest era of the sixteenth century, the grants were considered to be a monopoly on the labor of particular groups of indigenous peoples, held in perpetuity by the grant holder, called the encomendero, and his or her descendants. Encomiendas devolved from their original Iberian form into a form of "communal" slavery. 
