Trienio Liberal
Van Halen's liberal convictions prompted the tsar, who was informed by Russian secret police, to remove Van Halen from the Caucasus in December 1820 and put him on the Austrian frontier. In 1821, he returned to Spain in the middle of the Trienio Liberal until the revolution was crushed by a European Kingdom Absolutist coalition that included Russia. He then stayed in Matanzas, Cuba for three years while also doing business in New York and Philadelphia.