Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Spanish American wars of independence began in 1809 with the establishment of juntas in Chuquisaca and La Paz and concluded in 1833 when King Ferdinand VII died and Spain abandoned all plans of military reconquest. The conflict spanned 24 years, with the last royalist bastions in Veracruz, Callao, and Chiloé resisting until 1825 and 1826. Spain finally renounced sovereignty over continental America in 1836.
Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín were the primary liberators who led a continent-wide pincer movement to free most Spanish American nations. Other key figures included Miguel Hidalgo, who mobilized a peasant army in Mexico, and José Tomás Boves, a royalist leader who formed a powerful army from the Llaneros. In New Spain, Agustín de Iturbide and Vicente Guerrero forged an alliance to achieve independence, while Antonio José de Sucre commanded the decisive army at the Battle of Ayacucho.
The wars started in 1809 because Napoleon Bonaparte forced the Bourbon royal family to abdicate and installed his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne, creating a power vacuum. Spanish Americans initially rejected independence and preferred loyalty to the deposed King Ferdinand VII, but the lack of a legitimate monarch forced the colonies to govern themselves. This domestic coup in Europe shattered the political structure of the Spanish world and led to the establishment of juntas in Chuquisaca and La Paz.
The conflict was a brutal civil war that often turned on social and racial lines, pitting rural areas against urban centers and different racial groups against each other. In Mexico, Miguel Hidalgo mobilized a peasant army that massacred Creoles and Peninsulares, while in Venezuela, José Tomás Boves formed an army from mixed-race Llaneros to attack the white landowning class. The war involved native American communities, mestizos, and African slaves, and Simón Bolívar's policy of war to the death ordered the execution of neutral Peninsulares to redefine the social order.
The political revolution in Spain known as the Trienio Liberal doomed the royalist cause by preventing reinforcements from arriving and causing wholesale defections of units to the patriot side. On the 1st of January 1820, Rafael del Riego led a rebellion demanding the return of the 1812 Constitution, which forced Ferdinand VII to restore the Constitution on the 10th of March. The liberal government's attempts to negotiate with insurgents were fruitless because the patriots had already decided on full independence, and the Spanish government was divided between liberals and absolutists.
The main wars of independence in South America concluded with the Battle of Ayacucho in 1824, where the combined army of Colombians led by Simón Bolívar and Antonio José de Sucre destroyed a royalist army. The last royalist troops under Pedro Antonio Olañeta surrendered after he died in Tumusla on the 2nd of April 1825. Sucre proclaimed Upper Peru's independence in the city which now bears his name on the 6th of August, bringing the main wars of independence to an end.