The 2016 Spanish general election was held on Sunday, 26 June 2016, to elect the 12th 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.
No party had secured a majority in the 2015 election, resulting in the most fragmented parliament since 1977. Ensuing negotiations failed to produce a stable governing coalition, paving the way for a repeat election on 26 June. The political deadlock marked the first time that a Spanish election was triggered due to failure in the government formation process. Podemos and United Left (IU) joined forces ahead the election to form the Unidos Podemos alliance, along with several other minor left-wing parties. Opinion polling going into the election predicted a growing polarisation between this alliance and the People's Party (PP), which would be fighting to maintain first place nationally.
The Unidos Podemos alliance suffered a surprise decline in votes and vote share compared to the previous election, while the PP increased its number of votes and seats as well as its margin of victory. The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) clung to second place despite losing votes and seats, scoring a new historical low. Albert Rivera's Citizens (C's) suffered from the electoral system as well as from tactical voting to the PP and fell to 32 seats. Overall, a potential PP–C's bloc secured 6 more seats than before, but remained short of an overall majority. With the political deadlock settling in, commentators suggested that a new, third election could be eventually needed.
Electoral setbacks for the PSOE in the Basque and Galician regional elections held on 25 September 2016 unleashed a party crisis which led to Pedro Sánchez's ouster as leader on 1 October. An interim party leadership was appointed, which chose to abstain to allow government formation and prevent a third general election. As a result, Mariano Rajoy was re-elected as prime minister for a second term in office on 29 October amid public outcry and protest at PSOE's U-turn, which was also met with opposition from within the party—15 MPs eventually not complying with the party's directive and voting against Rajoy nonetheless. Rajoy's government would only last for 20 months until 2018, as public outcry at the emergence of new corruption scandals and judicial blows to the ruling party would prompt Sánchez—who would secure re-election as PSOE leader in June 2017—to bring down the PP government in the first successful motion of no confidence since the Spanish transition to democracy.
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 20 December 2015, which meant that the legislature's term would expire on 20 December 2019. The election decree was required to be published in the BOE no later than 26 November 2019, with the election taking place on the fifty-fourth day from publication, setting the latest possible election date for the on Sunday, 19 January 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.
The were officially dissolved on 3 May 2016 after the publication of the dissolution decree in the BOE, setting the election date for 26 June and scheduling for both chambers to reconvene on 19 July.
Background.
2015 election aftermath.
The 2015 Spanish general election resulted in the most fragmented Congress of Deputies in recent times. This raised the possibility that, for the first time since the Spanish transition to democracy, parliamentary deadlock over the investiture of a prime minister would require a new election to be held. According to Article 99.5 of the Spanish Constitution, "if within a period of two months from the first investiture vote no candidate has obtained the confidence of Congress, the King shall dissolve both chambers and call a new election, with the endorsement of the President of the Congress of Deputies."
As neither of the two possible pacts between the major parties—the conservative People's Party (PP) with liberal Citizens (C's) or the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) with left-wing Podemos—had enough deputies to command a parliamentary majority on their own without the support of peripheral nationalist parties, attention focused on the PSOE as it underwent a leadership crisis. The PP wanted the Socialists to either abstain in Rajoy's investiture vote or join them in a grand coalition; C's put pressure on the PSOE to abstain and avoid a snap election; while Podemos suggested that PSOE leader Pedro Sánchez had lost control of his party. PSOE and C's feared that a new election could see them losing votes to the benefit of both PP and Podemos.
A crisis developed within the PSOE after the December election result, with critics accusing Pedro Sánchez of lack of self-criticism for the election results—a then-historic low of 90 seats—ahead of PSOE's scheduled spring leadership election. While Sánchez favoured trying to reach an agreement with Podemos, regional party leaders refused to accept Podemos' negotiation terms and instead favoured allowing the PP to try to form a government on its own, and the possibility of a PSOE–Podemos pact faded. President of Andalusia Susana Díaz, who was reported to be leading an open rebellion within the party, was said to be seeking to replace Sánchez as party leader and to eventually lead the PSOE into a new general election in 2016.
PP scandals.
A persistent wave of corruption scandals struck the PP throughout the negotiation process. On 22 January, the PP became the first party ever to be charged in a corruption case, after being accused of destroying Bárcenas' hard drives in 2013, which had allegedly contained information related to the party's illegal funding. The same day, a key member of Deputy PM Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría's staff was forced to resign from his post after it was discovered that he had been involved in a scandal involving the fraudulent awarding of public contracts.
"Operation Taula", a major police operation in Valencia that took place on 26 January 2016, resulted in the arrest of several former and incumbent high-ranking members of the regional PP branch, as part of the ongoing investigation into PP corruption in the region during its time in government. By early February, a massive illegal financing network had been uncovered connected with PPCV, with dozens of party officials and city councillors indicted or arrested. The judicial investigation also implicated long-serving former Mayor of Valencia Rita Barberá in the scandal; her arrest or indictment was only prevented due to the fact she had legal immunity as an incumbent senator. A few days later, on 1 February, all PP city councillors in the city of Valencia, including new local party leader Alfonso Novo, were charged with a possible money laundering offence, along with most members of Barberá's previous government. The party found itself at risk of losing its municipal group in the city of Valencia—the third largest in Spain, which had seen 24 years of PP rule under Barberá's command—and rumours circulating of a reformation of the party in the region.
On 11 February, the scandal spread to Madrid when the Civil Guard was sent to search PP's main headquarters as part of the ongoing investigation resulting from the "Operation Punica" scandal, uncovered in October 2014. Evidence suggested that the public work contract kickbacks from the Punica case could also involve possible illegal financing of the PP branch in the region. Esperanza Aguirre, former President of Madrid from 2003 to 2012 and president of the party's regional branch since 2004, resigned as regional leader on 14 February as a consequence of the scandal's political fallout, emphasising her lack of "direct responsibility" for the scandal but "assuming [her] political responsibility" both as party leader and former regional premier.
In April, an urban planning corruption scandal was revealed to involve Granada's mayor and his government, all from PP. Meanwhile, the Spanish Treasury fined former prime minister José María Aznar for evading tax payments through a society. On 15 April, caretaker Industry Minister José Manuel Soria stepped down from his post as a result of his involvement in the Panama Papers scandal and his confusing and inconsistent statements on the issue.
Economy.
While negotiations to form a government were underway, Spain's public deficit for 2015 was announced as 5.2%, well above the 4.2% target agreed with the European Union and even exceeding the European Commission (EC) forecast of 4.8%. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) demanded that the large 2015 deficit translate into "substantial fiscal tightening", blaming the deficit on the PP government's 2015 decision to cut taxes for the election year. On 16 April, the government lowered its economic growth forecast for 2016 from 3% to 2.7%. As a result, Finance Minister Cristóbal Montoro announced €2 billion of spending cuts in order to curb the public deficit, while also demanding that the 12 autonomous communities