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I would like to pose a challenge of making the Count of Aranda's plan of a Spanish Federated Empire (proposed to D. Carlos III after the ARW) succeed.

Aranda had a perfectly well-founded argument for this in that, in a report he sent to Carlos, he informed him that the fledgling USA would "though now a pigmy" temporarily needing the support of France and Spain, "engulf Florida, interfere in Mexico and aspire to all the Spanish colonies in the Americas". His solution was the setting up of three monarchies in the Americas - one in Mexico, one in Peru and one in Nueva Granada, France would be granted trading privileges, whilst England would be rigidly excluded.

Among the advantages that would result from this plan had the contribution of the three kingdoms (as should be, one gold, one silver, and one in colonial genera), the cessation of continuous emigration to America, to prevent aggrandizement of the colonies, or of any other power that would settle in that part of the world, increasing our commercial and military marine, and added: "The islands have quoted above, managing them well and putting in good defense, suffice us for our trade, without other possessions, and finally would enjoy all the advantages that gives us the possession of America without any of the drawbacks. "

And Aranda was not the only statesman to propose this - Godoy proposed a similar idea (though with the exclusion of the French), the Plan of Iguala offered the throne of Mexico to first Fernando VII of Spain, then to D. Carlos, then D. Francisco and finally D. Pedro Carlos; and José de San Martin was considering such an idea as late as 1827.

Even Chateaubriand, when he assumed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for France in 1823, he attempted to make it palatable to the Spanish Bourbons that "Mexico and Peru were still both imperfectly sundered" from Spain" and that "by great care, reason and skill, it would perhaps be possible to establish in America great monarchies governed by princes of the house of Bourbon".

In his Voyages Chateaubriand states that the Spanish colonies would have benefited from being turned into constitutional monarchies both because of the superiority of this system to republicanism and because of its particular appropriateness to the Spanish character.

The Spanish Infantes available in 1776 (Parma and Naples not included):

Gabriel (b. 1752 (died in 1788 of smallpox with his wife and younger son)
Antonio Pasquale (b. 1755) married his niece in 1795, had a stillborn son shortly before she died in 1798.
Francisco Javier (b. 1757 (died 1771 of smallpox, but assume he survives it here).

Your objective is to export these infantes to the colonies and set up a Spanish Commonwealth (for want of a better term), bonus points if the monarchies can last to the present day.

Hope you enjoy.

NOTE: Aranda's idea for the plan was that Cuba, Puerto Rico and the East Indies remain directly under Spanish rule.
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