May Revolution
The mutiny of Aranjuez in 1808 led King Charles IV of Spain to abdicate in favor of his son, Ferdinand VII. Charles IV requested that Napoleon restore him to the throne; instead, Napoleon crowned his own brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as the new Spanish King. These events are known as the Abdications of Bayonne. Joseph's coronation was met with severe resistance in Spain, which started the Peninsular War, and the Supreme Central Junta took power in the name of the absent king. This also led to Spain switching allegiances from France to Britain. France eventually invaded Sevilla, and a Council of Regency based in Cadiz replaced the disbanded Supreme Central Junta.
May Revolution
Another consequence, also according to Luna, was the dissolution of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata into several different units. Most of the cities and provinces had distinctive populations, economies, attitudes, contexts, and interests. Until the revolution, all of these peoples were held together by the authority of the Spanish government, but with its disappearance, people from Montevideo, Paraguay and the Upper Peru began to distance themselves from Buenos Aires. The brief existence of the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata, which had lasted barely 38 years, impeded the consolidation of a patriotic feeling and failed to bring a sense of community to all of the population. The new country of Argentina lacked an established concept of national identity capable to unite the population under a common idea of statehood. Juan Bautista Alberdi sees the May Revolution as one of the early manifestations of the power struggles between the city of Buenos Aires and the provinces—one of the axial conflicts at play in the Argentine civil wars. Alberdi wrote in his book ""Escritos póstumos"":