Proposals made from Spain for the independence of America

Abstract

This paper sets out that, together with the Spanish efforts to retain the Americas against the secessionist process, there were also proposals from Spain to abandon all or part of the overseas territories. Some of the proposals were based on legal and moral grounds, and in particular on the famous controversy around Spain’s titles to appropriate such territories and on the absence of moral reasons to subdue the Indians. They were the reasons why Emperor Charles V projected to leave Peru. A second type of proposals was based on the conviction that the Spanish Empire, as all other empires in history, was destined sooner or later to perish, in this case due to the distance with the metropolis and its huge extension. Among these were the proposals of the governor Avalos in the 18th and of Prime Minister Godoy in the 19th centuries, and also the famous Memorial of the Count of Aranda to establish three monarchies, although the latter was a falsification made in the 19th century.