2000 Spanish general election
A general election was held in Spain on Sunday, 12 March 2000, to elect the members of the 7th Cortes Generales under the Spanish Constitution of 1978. All 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as 208 of 259 seats in the Senate. It was held concurrently with a regional election in Andalusia. At four years since the previous one, the 2000 election ended the longest legislative period up to that point since the Spanish transition to democracy.
The incumbent People's Party of Prime Minister José María Aznar had been able to access power for the first time since the Spanish transition to democracy through the Majestic Pact in 1996 with peripheral nationalist parties, namely: Convergence and Union, the Basque Nationalist Party and Canarian Coalition. In that period, Aznar's cabinet had presided over an economic boom—together with a privatization of state-owned companies—a reduction of the unemployment rate and the introduction of the euro, as well as increasing public outcry at the terrorist activity of the ETA group and an early social response to growing immigration to Spain, with the El Ejido riots in February 2000. The opposition was divided, with the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party looking for stable leadership after the farewell of Felipe González and a period of duumvirate between his successor, Joaquín Almunia, and prime ministerial nominee Josep Borrell, until Borrell's sudden resignation in May 1999.
The election saw the PP securing an unexpected absolute majority in the Congress of Deputies, obtaining 183 out of 350 seats and increasing its margin of victory with the PSOE. A pre-election agreement between the PSOE and United Left was unsuccessful, with such alliance being said to prompt tactical voting for Aznar, who also benefited from a moderate stance during his tenure. Almunia announced his resignation immediately after results were known, triggering a leadership election. Regional and peripheral nationalist parties improved their results, except for CiU—which had been in electoral decline for a decade following its support to Spanish ruling parties—and the abertzale left-supported Euskal Herritarrok, which urged its voters in the Basque Country and Navarre to boycott the election. The PNV benefitted from EH's absence and gained two seats, whereas both CC and the Galician Nationalist Bloc had strong showings in their respective regions. Initiative for Catalonia, which had split from IU in 1997, clung on to parliamentary representation but suffered from the electoral competition with United and Alternative Left, IU's newly-founded regional branch in Catalonia which failed to secure any seat. This would be the first and only general election in which both parties would contest each other.
This marked the first time that the PP secured a nationwide absolute majority, its best result in both popular vote share and seats up until then, as well as the first time that PP results exceeded the combined totals for PSOE and IU. In contrast, the PSOE got its worst election result in 21 years. This was the second time a party received more than 10 million votes, the previous one being in 1982. Voter turnout was one of the lowest for Spanish election standards up to that time, with only 68.7% of the electorate casting a vote.
Background
On 5 May 1996, José María Aznar from the People's Party was able to form the first centre-right government in Spain since 1982 through confidence and supply agreements with Convergence and Union, the Basque Nationalist Party, and Canarian Coalition, in what came to be coined as the Majestic Pact.On the economy, Aznar's government focused its efforts on reducing inflation, public debt and fiscal deficit—which was achieved in part through privatization of state-owned companies such as Telefónica, Tabacalera, Endesa and Repsol—and reactivating the private sector through orthodox economics, in order to meet the convergence criteria established by Maastricht. As a result, in 1999 Spain was able to join the new European currency, the euro. The unemployment rate saw a stark decrease while the Madrid Stock Exchange and the IBEX 35 saw record historical highs. The buoyancy of this period was dubbed an "economic miracle" and served as a platform for Aznar to coin the slogan España va bien.
The 1996 general election had seen the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party being forced into opposition for the first time since 1982. In the party congress held in June 1997, Felipe González, who had been prime minister for over 13 years until 1996 and PSOE secretary-general since 1974, announced his intention to leave the party's leadership. The party, divided at the time between González's supporters and those following the discipline of former deputy prime minister and PSOE deputy secretary-general Alfonso Guerra, elected Joaquín Almunia, a "renovator" and former labour and public administrations minister, as new party leader. While it was suggested that González could remain as the party's candidate for prime minister in the next general election, he ruled himself out.
A primary election to elect the prime ministerial nominee, held among PSOE members on 24 April 1998, saw Almunia, supported by González and prominent party "renovators", facing Josep Borrell, former public works minister who received the backing of the guerrista faction. Borrell defeated Almunia, but the latter remained as the party's secretary-general in order to prevent an extraordinary congress, a situation prompting a "bicephaly" which would see both Borrell and Almunia clashing for months on party direction and strategy issues, as the extent of each one's competences on the party's political leadership remained unclear. Borrell renounced as candidate in May 1999 after it was unveiled that two former aides were involved in a judicial investigation for tax fraud, leaving a vacancy that resulted in Almunia being proclaimed as candidate without opposition.
Disappointment with the 1996 election results led United Left to undergo an internal crisis, which worsened over Julio Anguita's confrontational attitude with the PSOE—to the point of siding with the PP in a number of parliamentary votes—and a perceived lack of democracy within IU. Anguita sought to prevent an electoral alliance between United Left–Galician Left and the Socialists' Party of Galicia ahead of the 1997 Galician regional election, a move which received criticism from Initiative for Catalonia, IU's sister party in Catalonia, with which disagreements over the alliance's political direction had been on the rise since the 1996 general election. The Democratic Party of the New Left, constituted as an internal current within IU which had been critical of Anguita's leadership, was expelled from the alliance's governing bodies after it broke party discipline in Congress over the issue of labour reform in June 1997. The crisis came to a peak in September 1997, which saw PDNI's expulsion from IU as a whole, the dissolution of the PDNI-controlled regional leaderships in Cantabria and Castilla–La Mancha and the break up of relations with EU–EG and IC. The PDNI then sought electoral alliances with the PSOE, which materialized ahead of the 1999 local, regional and European Parliament elections.
File:Aznar y Pujol.jpg|thumb|alt=José María Aznar and Jordi Pujol shaking hands in Moncloa palace|Relations between José María Aznar's People's Party and Jordi Pujol's Convergence and Union were critical for government stability.
The Basque separatist group ETA continued with its activity during these years, with its most relevant action being the kidnapping and assassination of PP Ermua councillor Miguel Ángel Blanco in July 1997. Blanco's killing had a deep social impact throughout Spain, with more than six million people across the country taking to the streets over four days to demand an end to ETA violence—a spontaneous civic response dubbed as the "Ermua spirit"—and even some of the group's supporters publicly condemned it. The signing of the Declaration of Estella between the PNV and Herri Batasuna in September 1998 led ETA to announce an "indefinite ceasefire" four days later. Aznar authorized talks between his government and ETA, but a single meeting in Zurich found the group no more willing to compromise on its core demands than it had been in the past; negotiations failed and ETA ended the truce in late 1999. In December 1999, the Civil Guard foiled a plot by ETA to bring 1,700 kg of explosives to Madrid, intended for its use in blowing up the Torre Picasso.
The relationship between the PP and its parliamentary allies became a focus of political interest due to its importance for government stability, the previous animosity between the PP and peripheral nationalism and diverging stances over the degree of devolution to be awarded to autonomous communities. PP and CiU frequently clashed over a number of issues and the degree of fulfillment of their signed commitments, with Catalan president Jordi Pujol persistently threatening to terminate his party's support to Aznar. Mutual interest, with the stability of Pujol's government in Catalonia also dependant on continued support from the PP in the regional parliament, helped ensure that the legislative term reached its end, with both parties confirming the renewal of their agreements in January 1998. As a result of the PP–CiU alliance, Aznar's government oversaw a large transfer of powers to regions—traffic, employment promotion, vocational training, port management and fiscal policies —the abolition of compulsory military service and the reform of the State's peripheral administration. Relations with Basque nationalists proved more difficult and worsened throughout the legislative term, particularly following the Estella declaration in September 1998, ultimately leading the PNV to withdraw all support to the government in 1999. Growing political differences between the PP and the Aragonese Party —allied since the 1996 election—saw the latter allying with the PSOE in the aftermath of the 1999 Aragonese regional election and breaking away from the PP's parliamentary group in October 1999.