SARIAYA is a first-class municipality of Quezon province, formerly known as Tayabas. The province was renamed after Manuel Quezon, the first president of the Commonwealth. He was a native of Baler, formerly part of Quezon and now part of Aurora, a separate province. He and his wife, Aurora Aragon Quezon, also of Baler, were known visitors of Sariaya, where they had close friends and found warm hospitality.

Indeed, Sariaya and the Sariayahins, as its residents are known, have a special and storied niche in the tradition and lore of Philippine towns. Found on the lower slopes of Mount Banahaw, the town's location is its third incarnation after natural calamities, like earthquakes and rushing waters and boulders from Banahaw (be it from earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or typhoons), as well as earlier Moro raids, impelled its inhabitants to move to a safer and higher place in then-forested areas farther from Tayabas Bay and closer to Banahaw.