and San Martín had spent most of his adult life waging war in Spain against the French. When San Martín talked about enemies, he called them "royalists" or "Goths", but never "Spanish". According to those historians, the Spanish revolution against absolutism got mixed up with the Peninsular War. When Ferdinand VII stood against his father Charles IV, who was seen as an absolutist king, many Spaniards got the mistaken impression that he sympathized with the new enlightened ideas. Thus, the revolutions made in the Americas in the name of Ferdinand VII (such as the May Revolution, the Chuquisaca Revolution, or the one in Chile) would have sought to replace absolutist power with power formulated under the new ideas. Even if Spain was at war with France, the ideals of the French Revolution (liberty, equality and fraternity) were still respected. Those revolutions pronounced themselves enemies of Napoleon, but did not face any active French military attack; they promoted instead fights between Spanish armies for keeping either the old or new order. This situation would change with the final defeat of Napoleon and the return of Ferdinand VII to the throne, as he began the Absolutist Restoration and persecuted the supporters of the new libertarian ideas within Spain. For people in South America, to stay as a part of the Spanish Empire, but with a new relationship with the mother country, was no longer a feasible option: the only remaining options at this point were to return to absolutism or to adopt independentism. Legacy May 25 is a national day in Argentina, known as First Patriotic Government, with the character of a public holiday. The public holiday is set by law 21.329 and is always celebrated on May 25, regardless of the day of the week. The Argentina Centennial and the Argentina Bicentennial were celebrated in 1910 and 2010. May 25 was designated as a patriotic date in 1813, but the Argentine Declaration of Independence suggests July 9 as an alternative national day. At first this added to the conflicts between Buenos Aires and the provinces during the Argentine Civil War, because the date in May related to Buenos Aires and the date of July 9 related to the whole country. Thus the unitarian Bernardino Rivadavia canceled the celebration of July 9, and the federalist Juan Manuel de Rosas allowed it again, but maintained the May celebrations. By 1880, the federalization of