Quito’s Notables Depose the Royal President

On August 10, 1809, prominent Creole residents in Quito deposed Manuel Ruiz Urriés de Castilla, the Spanish president of the Real Audiencia of Quito, and formed an autonomous governing junta. The French invasion of Spain and the forced abdication of King Ferdinand VII in 1808 had produced a constitutional crisis across the empire. As provincial assemblies arose in the Iberian Peninsula to govern in the captive monarch's name, local elites in Quito took similar measures. Their new administration professed continued fidelity to Ferdinand VII, yet it openly displaced the Crown's direct colonial officials in favor of local self-rule.

Led by intellectuals, professionals, and titled nobles, the movement reflected both regional discontent and the reformist thought fostered by earlier figures such as Eugenio Espejo. Juan Pío Montúfar, the Marquis of Selva Alegre, took office as president of the provisional junta, joined by Bishop José Cuero y Caicedo as vice president, with Juan de Dios Morales, Manuel Quiroga and Juan Larrea as ministers and Colonel Juan de Salinas in command of the military forces. The junta raised troops to secure the city and hoped for support from nearby regional centers, including Guayaquil, Cuenca, and Pasto. That support never came, and troops from Guayaquil, Popayán, and Pasto later marched against it.