Republic of Columbia Declared Independent

After early independence movements in New Granada had collapsed under Spain's reconquest, Simon Bolivar regrouped his forces and devised a bold campaign to liberate the interior. In 1819 he led his army across the flooded plains and over the frigid Andean paramo to surprise the royalists in the highlands of present-day Colombia.

On August 7, 1819, Bolivar won a decisive victory over the Spanish at the Battle of Boyaca, near the Boyaca River. The triumph shattered royalist power in New Granada and opened the road to Bogota, which Bolivar entered shortly afterward as the Spanish authorities fled.

Building on this success, Bolivar convened the Congress of Angostura, which in December 1819 proclaimed the Republic of Colombia, often called Gran Colombia. This ambitious union eventually joined the territories of present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama under a single government with Bolivar as president. The republic embodied his vision of a united Spanish America, though internal rivalries led to its dissolution into separate nations by 1830.