California Chat

This California chat is in Spanish for a reason: the 2020 census counted 15,579,652 Hispanic residents in California, 39.4% of the state and a quarter of all Hispanics in the United States, most of them of Mexican origin. #california is their room, whether they live in Greater Los Angeles, San Diego, the Bay Area, San José, Fresno or Sacramento, the state capital.

#california is new and has no regulars yet. Joining from this page also opens #usa, the busiest US room, and #latinos; both have people online.

Spanish was spoken here before English. Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo sailed into San Diego Bay on 28 September 1542, the Portolá expedition and Junípero Serra began the chain of 21 missions along El Camino Real in 1769, and the territory was part of Mexico until the war of 1846–48. Even the name most likely comes from a Spanish chivalric novel of 1510, Las sergas de Esplandián. California runs on Pacific Time, UTC−8 in winter and UTC−7 in summer, the same as Tijuana. See also Los Angeles, San Diego and Hispanics in the USA.