On March 19, 1808, at the summer palace of Aranjuez, King Charles IV of Spain was forced to abdicate to a court faction that removed Prime Minister Godoy – a French puppet and the Queen's lover.

Napoleon's troops occupied Madrid and he invited Charles IV and Ferdinand VII to Bayonne, France, where he forced both to abdicate in favor of his brother Joseph Bonaparte in May 1808.

An old Spanish law was invoked that in the absence of the head of state, sovereignty reverts to the people, expressed through their representatives in the Cortes.

On August 9, 1808, at a meeting of Notables called to debate the situation, Primo de Verdad spoke in favor of popular sovereignty.

On September 1, 1808, Melchor de Talamantes, a Peruvian priest and the intellectual leader of the Criollo party, delivered two tracts to the Cabildo, in favor of separation from Spain and the convoking of a Mexican congress.

On September 15, 1808, the Spaniards opposed to independence and popular sovereignty, headed by the rich businessman Gabriel J. de Yermo, staged a coup.

With this seizure of power, Yermo and the Peninsulares initiated a "half century of uprisings and coups d'état", in both colonial and independent Mexico (Fuentes Mares, p. 81).

Today in Mexico, Francisco Primo de Verdad y Ramos is revered as one of the protomartyrs of Mexican independence.