1871 Spanish general election


A general election was held in Spain from Wednesday, 8 March to Saturday, 11 March 1871, to elect the members of the 1st Cortes Generales under the Spanish Constitution of 1869, during the Democratic Sexennium period. 406 of 424 seats in the Congress of Deputies and all 200 seats in the Senate were up for election. In the Canary Islands the election was held until 15 March, in Puerto Rico it was held from 20 to 23 June, and in Cuba it was indefinitely postponed.
The election was held following the promulgation of the 1869 Constitution and the swearing-in of Amadeo I as King of Spain on 2 January 1871. Francisco Serrano, a member of the Liberal Union, was the prime minister before the election.

Background

Following the approval and promulgation of the Spanish Constitution of 1869, which enshrined Spain as a constitutional monarchy, the Constituent Cortes Generales searched for a suitable candidate from a new dynasty to replace the House of Bourbon, with Francisco Serrano serving as regent and Juan Prim as prime minister in the meantime.
Prince Amadeo of Savoy was chosen as new King of Spain on 16 November 1870 and sworn-in as Amadeo I on 2 January 1871, but Prim's assassination on 27 December left Amadeo without his proponent and main supporter. A new coalition cabinet formed by the Liberal Union, the Progressive Party and the Cimbrios Democrats was formed by Serrano, who called a snap election as a show of legitimacy for the new monarch, whose foreign origins made him unpopular with the general populace. In order to ensure the victory of the Monarchist–Democratic Coalition, Serrano reinstated first-past-the-post voting, which made it easier for the government to use electoral fraud in rural districts. Voters were required to present an "electoral card" that mayors were entitled to award to its constituents; as most of these were aligned with the governing coalition, they could refuse awarding the card to voters that were hostile to the government. They also employed voter intimidation tactics through the partida de la porra aligned to the Progressive Party, to violently attack opponents.
The enthronement of Amadeo I led to the Federal Democratic Republican Party splitting into two factions: the "benevolent", who aimed at deposing Amadeo through legal means, and the "intransigent", who dubbed the system as illegitimate and chose to abstain from electoral participation, advocating instead for the proclamation of a "federal republic from below" through violent insurrection. For Carlists, the good results obtained on the previous election, coupled with the failure of uprising attempts in the summers of 1869 and 1870, led to the movement favouring electoral means to achieve power. Ramón Cabrera, de facto leader of the movement, resigned as captain general of the Royal Carlist Army and retired from politics due to disagreements with Carlos de Borbón. The pretender assumed the chieftainship of the party and named a Central Council presided by the Marquis of Villadarias, who organised electoral activity and propaganda.
As a result of the Liberal Union's decision to support Amadeo's election, two factions split up and ran on their own in the 1871 election: the "montpensierists", supporters of the Duke of Montpensier's claim to the throne, and the conservative "alfonsists", who supported the claim of Isabella II's son, Alfonso de Borbón.

Overview

Under the 1869 Constitution, the Spanish Cortes Generales were envisaged as "co-legislative bodies", based on a nearly perfect bicameral system. Both the Congress of Deputies and the Senate had legislative, control and budgetary functions, sharing equal powers except for laws on contributions, public credit or military force, the first reading of which corresponded to Congress—which also had preeminence in case of disagreement—and impeachment processes against government ministers, in which each chamber had separate powers of indictment and trial.

Electoral system

Voting for each chamber of the Cortes was on the basis of universal manhood suffrage, which comprised all national males over 25 years of age and in full enjoyment of their civil rights. In Puerto Rico, voting was on the basis of censitary suffrage, comprising males of age fulfilling one of the following criteria: being literate or taxpayers with a minimum quota of 16 escudos. Voters were required to not being sentenced—by a final court ruling—to disqualification from political rights, to afflictive penalties not legally rehabilitated; neither being criminally prosecuted with an arrest warrant not substituted with bail; nor homeless.
The Congress of Deputies was entitled to one seat per each 40,000 inhabitants or fraction greater than 20,000. 406 members were elected in single-member districts using plurality voting and distributed among the provinces of Spain and Puerto Rico in proportion to their populations. 18 additional seats were awarded to three multi-member constituencies in the island of Cuba, where elections were indefinitely postponed due to the military situation.
All 200 seats in the Senate were elected using an indirect, write-in, two-round majority voting system. Voters in each local council elected delegates—equivalent in number to one-sixth of the councillors, with an initial minimum of one—who, together with provincial deputies, would in turn vote for senators. Each province, as well as the whole of Puerto Rico, was allocated four seats.
The law provided for by-elections to fill seats vacated in the Congress throughout the legislative term. By-elections were not required in the Senate, with vacancies being filled in the next regular election of the chamber.

Eligibility

For the Congress, Spanish citizens with the legal capacity to vote could run for election, provided that they were not holders of government-appointed offices. A number of positions were exempt from ineligibility, provided that no more than 40 deputies benefitted from these:
For the Senate, eligibility was limited to Spanish citizens over 40 years of age and in full enjoyment of their civil rights, provided that they belonged or had belonged to one of the following categories:
Other causes of ineligibility for both chambers were imposed on territorial-level officers in government bodies and institutions—during their tenure of office and up to three months after their dismissal—in constituencies within the whole or part of their respective area of jurisdiction; contractors of public works or services; tax collectors and their guarantors; and debtors of public funds ; additionally for Puerto Rico, ineligibility extended to those having been convicted of crimes related to the repression of slave trade. Incompatibility provisions extended to the impossibility of simultaneously holding the positions of deputy, senator, provincial deputy and local councillor, as well as serving by two or more parliamentary constituencies.

Election date

The term of each chamber of the Cortes—the Congress and one-quarter of the Senate—expired three years from the date of their previous election, unless they were dissolved earlier. The monarch had the prerogative to dissolve both chambers at any given time—either jointly or separately—and call a snap election. Only elections to renew one-quarter of the Senate were constitutionally required to be held concurrently with elections to the Congress, though the former could be renewed in its entirety in the case that a full dissolution was agreed by the monarch.
The Cortes had been officially dissolved since 2 January 1871, following the swearing-in of Amadeo I as King of Spain. The election decree was issued on 14 February, setting election day for between 8 and 11 March in most of the country and until 15 March in the Canary Islands, scheduling for both chambers to reconvene on 3 April. The publication of the election decree for Puerto Rico was delayed until 1 April, setting election day in the island for between 20 and 23 June. In Cuba, elections were indefinitely postponed due to the outbreak of the Ten Years' War.