Anita Arnon

talking about this.

There is this 30-year-old plantation owner who was the same 22-year-old who swore the oath on the hilltop in Rome that he would liberate his country.

Simon Bolivar is in the mix around this table and very much steering the conversation to, we don't need them anymore.

We don't need them.

I've seen what they're like.

I've seen what they do.

They are chaotic.

So after his trip to Europe, Bolivar sailed back to Venezuela, where this resentment is bubbling away against the Spanish government.

But Bolivar was far more radical than his peers around that table because he is saying, you know what, I know you're talking about autonomy, but I want independence.

We don't need them anymore.

We don't want them anymore.

They are fools and buffoons and they can't even control what's going on in mainland Spain.

So in 1810, he joins a diplomatic mission to London on behalf of the royalist junta in Venezuela.

So it's kind of like undercover of being a royalist, but you're actually, I mean, it's sort of spy crafty, really.

You're going to meet influential people and have a parallel conversation rather than the conversation that they are thinking you're going to have.

And in Britain, it's interesting at this time because there is covert support

for this Spanish-American independence.

Of course, as always.

If you break Spain, then you break their trade monopolies.

And you break Spain, then their markets on the continent, they're open for business to you.