Hawaiian historians, such as Reginald Yzendoorn and Richard W. Rogers, defended the possibility of the first European discovery of the Hawaiian Islands by Spain, especially by the Spanish sailor Juan Gaetano, since several 16th-century documents and maps detailed islands in the same geographical position that received the name: "La Mesa" in the case of Hawaii, "La Desgraciada" to refer to Maui, "Ulloa" to Kahoʻolawe, and "Los Monges" to Lanai and Molokai.

Likewise, geographers who had access to privileged information about the Spanish expeditions, such as Abraham Ortelius, did not fail to locate islands called “Los Bolcanes” and “La Farfana” at those same coordinates.

[2][3][4][5] Perhaps the first Spanish immigrant to take up residence in Hawaii was Francisco de Paula Marín (1774-1837), a self-promoting adventurer who knew several languages, and served King Kamehameha I as an interpreter and military advisor.

The Hawaiian government, with the support of the plantation owners, initially brought in contract laborers from China to fill this need, but public sentiment gradually turned against continued importation of the Chinese, and Portuguese workers were recruited to take their place.

[10][11] The importation of Spanish laborers to Hawaii began in 1907, when the British steamship SS Heliopolis arrived in Honolulu Harbor with 2,246 immigrants from the Málaga province of Spain.

[15] Despite hopes that the Spanish immigrants who came to Hawaii would stay and continue to work on the sugarcane plantations, most emigrated to the mainland United States, generally California, as soon as they could in search of greater opportunity.

Although the Spanish tended to move on, most of them to the agricultural fields of California, they were quickly supplanted by Spanish-speaking immigrants from the Philippines and Puerto Rico, who by 1930 made up, respectively, 17.1% and 1.8% of the population.

One San Francisco newspaper reported that the “Spaniards say that they were worked fourteen hours a day on the plantations, and that they were obliged to purchase the necessities of life from the company stores at an exorbitant price.