 As news of this arrived throughout Spanish America during the next three weeks to nine months—depending on time it took goods and people to travel from Spain—political fault lines appeared.Royal officials and Spanish Americans were split between those who supported the idea of maintaining the status quo—that is leaving all the government institutions and officers in place—regardless of the developments in Spain, and those who thought that the time had come to establish local rule, initially through the creation of juntas, in order to preserve the independence of Spanish America from the French or from a rump government in Spain that could no longer legitimately claim to rule a vast empire.It is important to note that, at first, the juntas claimed to carry out their actions in the name of the deposed king and did not formally declare independence.