The November 2019 Spanish general election was held on Sunday, 10 November 2019, to elect the 14th of the Kingdom of Spain. All 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as 208 of 265 seats in the Senate.
The election was held as provided under article 99.5 of the Spanish Constitution, as a result of the failure in government formation negotiations between the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and Unidas Podemos following Pedro Sánchez's failed investiture voting on 23–25 July 2019. On 17 September 2019, King Felipe VI declined to propose any candidate for investiture ahead of the 23 September deadline as a result of the lack of agreement between parties, with a new general election scheduled for 10 November. The failure in negotiations prompted Podemos founder Íñigo Errejón to turn his regional Más Madrid platform—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 (IU) allies, such as Coalició Compromís, Equo or Chunta Aragonesista (CHA), while also seeing an exodus of a number of Podemos officials into Errejón's new party.
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 (66.5%), 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 People's Party (PP) and large gains for the far-right Vox party at the expense of Citizens (Cs), 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.
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 28 April 2019, which meant that the legislature's term would have expired on 28 April 2023. The election decree was required to be published in the BOE no later than 4 April 2023, with the election taking place on the fifty-fourth day from publication, setting the latest possible election date for the on Sunday, 28 May 2023.
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 24 September 2019 after the publication of the dissolution decree in the BOE, setting the election date for 10 November and scheduling for both chambers to reconvene on 3 December.
Parliamentary composition.
The tables below show the composition of the parliamentary groups in both chambers at the time of dissolution.
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Parties and candidates.
Eligibility requirements.
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's decision nor convicted by a judgement, even if not yet final, which imposed a penalty of forfeiture of eligibility or of specific disqualification or suspension from public office under specific offences: rebellion, terrorism or other crimes against the state. Other general causes of ineligibility were imposed on members of the Spanish royal family; 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 Prime Minister's Office, government delegations, the Social Security and other government agencies; heads of diplomatic missions in foreign states or international organizations; judges and public prosecutors in active service; Armed Forces and police corps personnel in active service; members of electoral commissions; 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 the Nuclear Safety Council; as well as a number of territorial-level officers in the aforementioned government bodies and institutions being barred from running, during their tenure of office, in constituencies within the whole or part of their respective area of jurisdiction. Disqualification provisions for the Cortes Generales extended to any employee of a foreign state and to members of regional governments, as well as the impossibility of running simultaneously as candidate for both the Congress and Senate.
The electoral law allowed for parties and federations registered in the interior ministry, coalitions and groupings of electors to present lists of candidates. Parties and federations intending to form a coalition 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 coalitions 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. The electoral law provided for a special, simplified process 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 coalitions without needing to go through pre-election procedures again. Additionally, a balanced composition of men and women was required in the lists of candidates, so that candidates of either sex made up at least 40 percent of the total composition.
Main competing lists.
Below is a list of the main parties and electoral alliances which contested the election:
Timetable.
The November 2019 Spanish general election was the first to apply the new electoral procedures introduced for election re-runs as a result of the experience of the 2015–2016 political deadlock leading to the June 2016 election. This consisted of a special, simplified process, 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 coalitions without needing to go through the same pre-election procedures again. The key dates are listed below (all times are CET. The Canary Islands used WET (UTC+0) instead):
Campaign.
Pre-campaign period.
The pre-campaign period saw the rise of a new left-wing electoral platform, Más País, founded by former Podemos co-founder Íñigo Errejón around his Más Madrid platform, following the failure of the left to agree on a government following the April election. Más País was joined by several other parties, such as Coalició Compromís, Chunta Aragonesista and Equo, the latter of which voted for breaking up its coalition with Unidas Podemos in order to join Errejón's platform. The leadership of Podemos in the Region of Murcia also went on to joint Más País. The platform went on to poll at 6% as soon as it was formed.
On 24 September, the Spanish Supreme Court ruled in favor of the PSOE's plan to remove the remnants of Francisco Franco from the Valle de los Caídos, a key policy of Pedro Sánchez during the previous legislature. The prior of the Valle de los Caídos' abbey, Santiago Cantera, initially announced his intention to disregard the Supreme Court's ruling and not authorize Franco's exhumation; however, the Spanish government closed down the monument to the public on 11 October in order to prepare for the exhumation—finally scheduled for 22 October at latest, so for the removal to be over by 25 October—to uphold the Supreme Court's ruling.
On 13 October, the leaders of the Catalan independence movement involved in the events of October 2017 were sentenced by the Supreme Court for sedition and embezzlement to convictions ranging from 9 to 13 years in jail. The ruling unleashed a wave of violent protests throughout Catalonia, and particularly in Barcelona, throughout the ensuing days.
Voter turnout.
The table below shows registered vote