República de Florida
In 1800, Rafael Riego was impressed into the army to fight anti-colonial movements in the Americas. That same year, Fernando Prince of Asturias and a cadre of reactionary officers and politicians, united with an angry populace in opposition to the alliance with Revolutionary France, launched a coup against the liberal Carlos IV. After a civil war, Fernando VII entered Madrid in 1804, and when in 1806 the last liberal strongholds on the Mediterranean coast were taken Carlos IV went into exile to Parma, where he would stay until his restoration with the fall of Napoleon. Fernando VII was killed during the Peninsular War that followed his seizure of power and subsequent declaration of war on France.
During the civil war, Spanish forces throughout the Americas received conflicting messages from the rival governments who both attempted to recall them to fight the war at home. Riego, by this time an officer stationed in Florida, received one such letter from Fernando's government, and fearing execution whether he returned to Spain or disobeyed and remained in San Agustín, he deserted his command along with several other liberal officers he had connections with. His faithful band of rebels, all now wanted out-laws, hid in the forests and stayed with a group of Yatsiminoli for several years.
When news reached them that Fernando VII had been killed and Spain was under French occupation, they came out of hiding. Carlos IV was now the sole Bourbon monarch of a conquered Spain, and officers around the world pledged their loyalty to him in the war against the French.
However, when the war was over and Carlos IV was returned to the throne, he reinstated the deeply unpopular Manuel de Godoy, and refused to accept the Cortes of Cádiz, saying that the Cortes had not been assembled in the traditional caste-based composition. As promised, a new Cortes was held in 1816 in the customary manner, but the resulting constitution pleased almost no-one. It was both too reactionary, providing the king with no checks on power and declaring catholicism the sole and unique religion of the country, yet it was also too liberal, allowing extensive royal powers over the church and the right to seize church assets for the need of the country.
The seizure of church property, with the motive to restore Spain's shattered finances, sent roars of anger across the empire, and despite that it had been done before, this time the anger grew until radical revolutionaries had sprung up in places they hadn't been before, led by unlikely people. In Mexico, catholic priests had been instrumental in leading the first insurrections, and in Florida, missionary priests led similar acts of protest inspired by them. Riego and his revolutionaries, now joined by angry crowds, seized the fortifications at San Agustín in 1818 with the help of a mutiny among the black soldiers at Fort Mose, forming a new republican government before launching expeditions to take control of the rest of the territory. During this time, a tricolor of orange, white, and red began to be used as a rebel symbol, its design taking inspiration from the French Revolutionary tricolor and from the abundance of sweet oranges and other citrus fruits in the richly verdant country.
With the colonial administrations falling apart, Carlos IV agreed to a deal with the rebels in Florida, proposed by Godoy, in an effort to retain at any cost the invaluable tax revenues of the remaining colonies as a new civil war threatened to break out over the Cortes of 1816. The rebels were given control over the territory, with the right to hold a Cortes in any form they chose in Florida, and that the territory should be formed into a kingdom under the rule of the Bourbon house. After being briefly made Prime Minister, Riego stepped down from this position to retire after one year, as the newly enthroned Carlos V held very cold feelings towards him, and over the next few years the king enacted strict controls over Florida, forcing free black subjects and indigenous peoples into slavery in order to harvest cotton in the north and to prevent rebellions, and ordering the formation of a new Cortes of Florida in the traditional manner of the Spanish Cortes, while such an arrangement was very difficult and negotiations dragged on.
Opposing the expansion of chattel slavery were the same clergy that had supported independence, and the missions rose up once again behind Riego, who was convinced to return to politics. With the final expulsion of the Spanish from the country, he was proclaimed King of Florida by a new Cortes dominated by a monarchist faction. A famous painting depicts this event, Riego wearing a bicorne adorned with a cockade of orange, white, and red, solidifying the tricolor as a widely-recognized national symbol, while the coat of arms was designed by Riego himself, and the broken shackle with sun added following the formation of the Third Republic.