The April 2019 Spanish general election was held on Sunday, 28 April 2019, to elect the 13th of the Kingdom of Spain. All 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as 208 of 266 seats in the Senate.
Following the 2016 election, the People's Party (PP) formed a minority government with confidence and supply support from Ciudadanos (Cs) and Canarian Coalition (CC), which was enabled by the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) abstaining from Mariano Rajoy's investiture after a party crisis resulted in the ousting of Pedro Sánchez as leader. The PP's term of office was undermined by a constitutional crisis over the Catalan issue, the result of a regional election held thereafter, coupled with corruption scandals and protests with thousands of retirees demanding pension increases. In May 2018, the National Court found in the Gürtel case that since 1989 the PP had profited from the kickbacks-for-contracts scheme and confirmed the existence of an illegal accounting and financing structure kept separate from the party's official accounts. Sánchez, who was re-elected as PSOE leader in a leadership contest in 2017, brought down Rajoy's government in June 2018 through a motion of no confidence. Rajoy resigned as PP leader and was subsequently succeeded by Pablo Casado.
Presiding over a minority government of 84 deputies, Pedro Sánchez struggled to maintain a working majority in the Congress with the support of the parties that had backed the no-confidence motion. The 2018 Andalusian regional election which saw a sudden and strong rise of the far-right Vox party resulted in the PSOE losing the regional government for the first time in history to a PP–Cs–Vox alliance. After the 2019 General State Budget was voted down by the Congress of Deputies on 13 February 2019 as a result of Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCAT) siding against the government, Sánchez called a snap election to be held on 28 April, one month ahead of the Super Sunday of local, regional, and European Parliament elections scheduled for 26 May. The Valencian regional election was scheduled for 28 April in order for it to take place on the same date as the general election.
On a turnout of 71.8%, the ruling PSOE of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez won a victory—the first for the party in a nationwide election in eleven years—with 28.7% of the vote and 123 seats, an improvement of 38 seats over its previous mark which mostly came at the expense of left-wing Unidas Podemos. In the Senate, the PSOE became the largest party in the chamber for the first time since 1995, winning its first absolute majority of seats in that chamber since the 1989 election. The PP under Casado received its worst result in history after being reduced to 66 seats and 16.7% of the vote in what was dubbed the worst electoral setback for a major Spanish party since the collapse of the UCD in 1982. Cs saw an increase of support which brought them within 0.8% of the vote and within 9 seats of the PP, passing them in several major regions. The far-right Vox party entered Congress for the first time, but it failed to fulfill expectations by scoring 10.3% of the vote and 24 seats, which was less than was indicated in opinion polls during the run-up to the election. The three-way split in the overall right-of-centre vote not only ended any chance of an Andalusian-inspired right-wing alliance, but it also ensured that Sánchez's PSOE would be the only party that could realistically form a government.
Overview.
Electoral system.
The Spanish 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 few exclusive (yet limited in number) functions—such as its role in constitutional amendment—which were not subject to the Congress' override. Voting for the was on the basis of universal suffrage, which comprised all nationals over 18 years of age and in full enjoyment of their political rights. Additionally, Spaniards abroad were required to apply for voting before being permitted to vote, a system known as "begged" or expat vote ().
For the Congress of Deputies, 348 seats were elected using the D'Hondt method and a closed list proportional representation, with an electoral threshold of three percent of valid votes—which included blank ballots—being applied in each constituency. Seats were allocated to 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. Ceuta and Melilla were allocated the two remaining seats, which were elected using plurality voting. The use of the electoral method resulted in an 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:
For the Senate, 208 seats were elected using an open list partial block voting system, with electors voting for individual candidates instead of parties. 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—Majorca, Gran Canaria and Tenerife—being allocated three seats each, and the smaller—Menorca, Ibiza–Formentera, Fuerteventura, La Gomera, El Hierro, Lanzarote and La Palma—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 legislature's term were to be covered by the successive candidates in the list and, when needed, by the designated substitutes, of which the list could include up to ten.
Election date.
The term of each chamber of the —the Congress and the Senate—expired four years from the date of their previous election, unless they were dissolved earlier. The election decree was required to be issued no later than the twenty-fifth day prior to the date of expiry of parliament and published on the following day in the Official State Gazette (BOE), with election day taking place on the fifty-fourth day from publication. The previous election was held on 26 June 2016, which meant that the legislature's term would expire on 26 June 2020. The election decree was required to be published in the BOE no later than 2 June 2020, with the election taking place on the fifty-fourth day from publication, setting the latest possible election date for the on Sunday, 26 July 2020.
The prime minister had the prerogative to propose the monarch to dissolve both chambers at any given time—either jointly or separately—and call a snap election, provided that no motion of no confidence was in process, no state of emergency was in force and that dissolution did not occur before one year had elapsed since the previous one. Additionally, both chambers were to be dissolved and a new election called if an investiture process failed to elect a prime minister within a two-month period from the first ballot. Barred this exception, there was no constitutional requirement for simultaneous elections to the Congress and the Senate. Still, as of 2025 there has been no precedent of separate elections taking place under the 1978 Constitution.
After the 2019 General State Budget was voted down by the Congress of Deputies on 13 February 2019, it was announced that Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez would be calling a snap election for April. Sánchez confirmed the election date in an institutional statement following a Council of Ministers meeting on 15 February.
The were officially dissolved on 5 March 2019 after the publication of the dissolution decree in the BOE, setting the election date for 28 April and scheduling for both chambers to reconvene on 21 May.
Background.
The June 2016 general election had resulted in the People's Party (PP) gaining votes and seats relative to its result in the December 2015 election and a round of coalition talks throughout the summer saw Mariano Rajoy obtaining the support of Ciudadanos (C's) and Canarian Coalition (CC) for his investiture, but this was still not enough to assure him re-election. Criticism of Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) leader Pedro Sánchez for his electoral results and his stance opposing Rajoy's investiture, said to be a contributing factor to the country's political deadlock, reached boiling point after poor PSOE showings in the Basque and Galician elections. A party crisis ensued, seeing Sánchez being ousted and a caretaker committee being appointed by party rebels led by Susana Díaz, who subsequently set out to abstain in Rajoy's investiture and allow a PP minority government to be formed, preventing a third election in a row from taking place. Díaz's bid to become new party leader was defeated by party members in a party primary in May 2017, with Sánchez being voted again into office under a campaign aimed at criticising the PSOE's abstention in Rajoy's investiture.
Concurrently, the incumbent PP cabinet found itself embroiled in a string of political scandals which had seen the political demise of former Madrid premier Esperanza Aguirre—amid claims of a massive financial corruption plot staged by former protegés—as well as accusations of judicial meddling and political cover-up. This prompted left-wing Unidos Podemos to table a no-confidence motion on Mariano Rajoy in June 2017. While the motion was voted down due to a lack of support from other opposition parties, it revealed the parliamentary weakness of Rajoy's government as abstentions and favourable votes combined amounted to 179, to just 170 MPs rejecting it.
Pressure on the Spanish government increased after a major constitutional crisis over the issue of an independence referendum unravelled in Catalonia. Initial actions from the Parliament of Catalonia to approve two bills supporting a referendum and a legal framework for an independent Catalan state were suspended by the Constitutional Court of Spain. The government's crackdown on referendum preparations—which included police searches, raids and arrests of Catalan government officials as well as an intervention into Catalan finances—sparked public outcry and protests accusing the PP government of "anti-democratic and totalitarian" repression. The Catalan parliament voted to unilaterally declare independence from Spain, which resulted in the Spanish Senate enforcing Article 155 of the Constitution to remove the regional authorities and impose direct rule. Carles Puigdemont and part of his cabinet fled to Belgium after being ousted, facing charges of sedition, rebellion and embezzlement. Rajoy immediately dissolved the Catalan parliament and called a regional election for 21 December 2017, but it left his PP severely mauled as Cs capitalised on anti-independence support in the region.
The scale of PP's collapse in Catalonia and the success of Cs had an impact on national politics, with Ciudadanos rising to first place nationally in subsequent opinion polls, endangering PP's stand as the hegemonic party within the Spanish centre-right spectrum. Massive protests by pensioners groups, long regarded as a key component of the PP's electoral base, demanding pension increases, further undermining the PP's standing.
On 24 May 2018, the National Court found that the PP profited from the illegal kickbacks-for-contracts scheme of the Gürtel case, confirming the existence of an illegal accounting and financing structure that had run in parallel with the party's official one since 1989 and ruling that the PP helped establish "a genuine and effective system of institutional corruption through the manipulation of central, autonomous and local public procurement". This event prompted the PSOE to submit a motion of no confidence in Rajoy and in Cs withdrawing its support from the government and demanding the immediate calling of an early election. An absolute majority of 180 MPs in the Congress of Deputies voted to oust Mariano Rajoy from power on 1 June 2018, replaced him as prime minister with PSOE's Pedro Sánchez. On 5 June, Rajoy announced his farewell from politics and his return to his position as property registrar in Santa Pola, vacating his seat in the Congress of Deputies and triggering a leadership contest in which