1987 Madrid municipal election
A municipal election was held in Madrid on Wednesday, 10 June 1987, to elect the 3rd City Council of the municipality. All 55 seats in the City Council were up for election. It was held concurrently with regional elections in thirteen autonomous communities and local elections all across Spain, as well as the 1987 European Parliament election.
The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party won the election, but lost its absolute majority and lost 137,000 votes compared to 1983. The People's Alliance, which stood separately after the breakup of the People's Coalition in 1986, failed to meet the level of support reached by the coalition in 1983 and also lost votes and seats. Benefitting from both parties' losses was the Democratic and Social Centre, which, with its 8 seats and 15% of the votes, entered the City Council for its first and only time and went on to hold the balance of power. United Left, an electoral coalition comprising the Communist Party of Spain and other left-wing parties, continued on its long-term decline and lost 1 more seat, barely obtaining 100,000 votes and 6% of the share.
AP and CDS together reached an absolute majority, but failure on reaching an agreement resulted in Socialist Juan Barranco being re-elected as mayor. However, in June 1989, both parties agreed to present a motion of censure on Barranco and elect Agustín Rodríguez Sahagún from the CDS as new mayor, ousting the PSOE from power in the city after a 10-year rule.
Overview
Under the 1978 Constitution, the governance of municipalities in Spain—part of the country's local government system—was centered on the figure of city councils, local corporations with independent legal personality composed of a mayor, a government council and an elected legislative assembly. In the case of Madrid, the top-tier administrative and governing body was the City Council of Madrid.Electoral system
Voting for local assemblies was on the basis of universal suffrage, which comprised all nationals over 18 years of age, registered and residing in the municipality of Madrid and in full enjoyment of their political rights, as well as resident non-nationals whose country of origin allowed Spanish nationals to vote in their own elections by virtue of a treaty.Local councillors were elected using the D'Hondt method and a closed list proportional voting system, with an electoral threshold of five percent of valid votes being applied in each municipality. Each municipality constituted a multi-member constituency, entitled a number of seats based on the following scale:
| Population | Councillors |
| <250 | 5 |
| 251–1,000 | 7 |
| 1,001–2,000 | 9 |
| 2,001–5,000 | 11 |
| 5,001–10,000 | 13 |
| 10,001–20,000 | 17 |
| 20,001–50,000 | 21 |
| 50,001–100,000 | 25 |
| >100,001 | +1 per each 100,000 inhabitants or fraction +1 if total is an even number |
The law did not provide for by-elections to fill vacated seats; instead, any vacancies that occurred after the proclamation of candidates and into the legislative term were to be covered by the successive candidates in the list and, when required, by the designated substitutes.
The mayor was indirectly elected by the local assembly. A legal clause required candidates to earn the vote of an absolute majority of councillors, or else the candidate of the most-voted party was to be automatically appointed to the post. In the event of a tie, the appointee was to be determined by lot.
Election date
The term of city councils in Spain expired four years after the date of their previous election. The election decree was required to be issued no later than the twenty-fifth day prior to the scheduled date of expiry of the city councils and published on the following day in the Official State Gazette, with election day taking place between the fifty-fourth and the sixtieth day from publication. The previous local elections were held on 8 May 1983, which meant that the city councils' terms would have expired on 8 May 1987. The election decree was required to be published in the BOE no later than 14 April 1987, with the election taking place up to the sixtieth day from publication, setting the latest possible date for election day on Saturday, 13 June 1987.Local councils could not be dissolved before the expiry of their term, except in cases of mismanagement that seriously harmed the public interest and implied a breach of constitutional obligations, in which case the Council of Ministers could—optionally—agree to call a by-election.
Elections to local councils were officially called on 14 April 1987 with the publication of the corresponding decree in the BOE, setting election day for 10 June.
Parties and candidates
The electoral law allowed for parties and federations registered in the interior ministry, alliances and groupings of electors to present lists of candidates. Parties and federations intending to form an alliance ahead of an election were required to inform the relevant electoral commission within ten days of the election call, whereas groupings of electors needed to secure the signature of a determined amount of the electors registered in the municipality for which they sought election, disallowing electors from signing for more than one list of candidates. In the case of Madrid, as its population was over 1,000,001, at least 8,000 signatures were required.Below is a list of the main parties and electoral alliances which contested the election:
The Liberal Party, which had contested the previous election within the People's Coalition as the Liberal Union, chose not to field any candidates.