November 2019 Spanish general election
A general election was held in Spain on Sunday, 10 November 2019, to elect the members of the 14th 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 265 seats in the Senate. It was a repeat election under the provisions of Article 99.5 of the Constitution, as a result of the failure in government formation negotiations following the previous general election.
Political differences between the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party and Unidas Podemos after the April 2019 election saw Pedro Sánchez's failed investiture as prime minister on 23–25 July 2019. With no further party negotiations during the summer, King Felipe VI declined to propose any candidate for investiture ahead of the 23 September deadline, with a new general election scheduled for 10 November. The failure in negotiations prompted Podemos' founder Íñigo Errejón to turn his regional Más Madrid party—which had obtained a remarkable result in the 26 May Madrilenian regional election—into a national alliance under the newly created brand of Más País, comprising a number of regional parties and former Podemos and United Left allies, such as Coalició Compromís, Equo or Chunta Aragonesista, while also seeing an exodus of a number of Podemos officials.
Voter turnout was the lowest since the transition to democracy in 1975, with just 66.2% of the electorate casting a ballot, which was lower than the previous negative record set in the 2016 election, the only other occasion in Spanish democracy that an election was triggered as a result of the failure of a government formation process. The election saw a partial recovery for the opposition People's Party and large gains for the far-right Vox party at the expense of Citizens, which suffered one of the largest electoral setbacks in the history of Spanish elections following the party scoring its best historical result in the April 2019 general election, signalling the end of Albert Rivera's active political career. Both PSOE and Unidas Podemos saw slight decreases in both popular vote and seats, but were still able to outperform the combined strength of PP, Vox and Cs; consequently, both parties agreed to set aside their political feuds and successfully negotiated a government shortly after the election, to become the first governing coalition in Spain since the Second Spanish Republic.
The tenure of the newly formed government, which was formally appointed on 13 January 2020, would be quickly overshadowed by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March and its political and economical consequences, including the worst worldwide recession since the Great Depression resulting from the massive lockdowns enforced to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
Overview
Under the 1978 Constitution, the Spanish Cortes Generales were envisaged as an imperfect bicameral system. The Congress of Deputies had greater legislative power than the Senate, having the ability to vote confidence in or withdraw it from a prime minister and to override Senate vetoes by an absolute majority of votes. Nonetheless, the Senate possessed a limited number of functions—such as ratification of international treaties, authorization of collaboration agreements between autonomous communities, enforcement of direct rule, regulation of interterritorial compensation funds, and its role in constitutional amendment and in the appointment of members to the Constitutional Court and the General Council of the Judiciary—which were not subject to the Congress's override.Electoral system
Voting for each chamber of the Cortes Generales was on the basis of universal suffrage, which comprised all nationals over 18 years of age and in full enjoyment of their political rights, provided that they were not sentenced—by a final court ruling—to deprivation of the right to vote. Additionally, Spaniards abroad were required to apply for voting before being permitted to vote, a system known as "begged" or expat vote.The Congress of Deputies was entitled to a minimum of 300 and a maximum of 400 seats, with the electoral law setting its size at 350. 348 members were elected in 50 multi-member constituencies—corresponding to the provinces of Spain, with each being allocated an initial minimum of two seats and the remaining 248 being distributed in proportion to their populations—using the D'Hondt method and a closed list proportional voting system, with an electoral threshold of three percent of valid votes being applied in each constituency. The two remaining seats were allocated to Ceuta and Melilla as single-member districts and elected using plurality voting. The use of the electoral method resulted in a higher effective threshold based on the district magnitude and the distribution of votes among candidacies.
As a result of the aforementioned allocation, each Congress multi-member constituency was entitled the following seats:
| Seats | Constituencies |
| 37 | Madrid |
| 32 | Barcelona |
| 15 | Valencia |
| 12 | Alicante, Seville |
| 11 | Málaga |
| 10 | Murcia |
| 9 | Cádiz |
| 8 | A Coruña, Balearic Islands, Biscay, Las Palmas |
| 7 | Asturias, Granada, Pontevedra, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Zaragoza |
| 6 | Almería, Badajoz, Córdoba, Gipuzkoa, Girona, Tarragona, Toledo |
| 5 | Cantabria, Castellón, Ciudad Real, Huelva, Jaén, Navarre, Valladolid |
| 4 | Álava, Albacete, Burgos, Cáceres, La Rioja, León, Lleida, Lugo, Ourense, Salamanca |
| 3 | Ávila, Cuenca, Guadalajara, Huesca, Palencia, Segovia, Teruel, Zamora |
| 2 | Soria |
208 seats in the Senate were elected using an open list partial block voting system: in constituencies electing four seats, electors could vote for up to three candidates; in those with two or three seats, for up to two candidates; and for one candidate in single-member districts. Each of the 47 peninsular provinces was allocated four seats, whereas for insular provinces, such as the Balearic and Canary Islands, districts were the islands themselves, with the larger being allocated three seats each, and the smaller one each. Ceuta and Melilla elected two seats each. Additionally, autonomous communities could appoint at least one senator each and were entitled to one additional senator per each million inhabitants.
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.
Eligibility
Spanish citizens of age and with the legal capacity to vote could run for election, provided that they were not sentenced to imprisonment by a final court ruling nor convicted, even if by a non-final ruling, to forfeiture of eligibility or to specific disqualification or suspension from public office under particular offences: rebellion, terrorism or other crimes against the state. Other causes of ineligibility were imposed on the following officials:- Members of the Spanish royal family and their spouses;
- The holders of a number of positions: the president and members of the Constitutional Court, the General Council of the Judiciary, the Supreme Court, the Council of State, the Court of Auditors and the Economic and Social Council; the Ombudsman; the State's Attorney General; high-ranking members—undersecretaries, secretaries-general, directors-general and chiefs of staff—of Spanish government departments, the Office of the Prime Minister, the Social Security and other government agencies; government delegates and sub-delegates in the autonomous communities; the chair of RTVE; the director of the Electoral Register Office; the governor and deputy governor of the Bank of Spain; the chairs of the Official Credit Institute and other official credit institutions; and members of electoral commissions and of the Nuclear Safety Council;
- Heads of diplomatic missions in foreign states or international organizations ;
- Judges and public prosecutors in active service;
- Personnel of the Armed Forces and law enforcement corps in active service.
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 at least one percent of the electorate in the constituencies for which they sought election, disallowing electors from signing for more than one list of candidates. Concurrently, parties, federations or alliances that had not obtained a mandate in either chamber of the Cortes at the preceding election were required to secure the signature of at least 0.1 percent of electors in the aforementioned constituencies. Additionally, a balanced composition of men and women was required in the electoral lists, so that candidates of either sex made up at least 40 percent of the total composition.
A special, simplified process was provided for election re-runs, including a shortening of deadlines, electoral campaigning, the lifting of signature requirements if these had been already met for the immediately previous election and the possibility of maintaining lists and alliances without needing to go through pre-election procedures again.