A general election was held in Spain on 1 March 1979 to elect the members of the 1st under the Spanish Constitution of 1978. All 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as all 208 seats in the Senate. This was the first election held under the new constitution that had been approved in a referendum on 6 December 1978 and which had lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, resulting in an increase of the electoral roll by three million people.
The Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD) remained the largest party, winning 168 of the 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies and 119 of the 208 seats in the Senate. The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), which had merged with the People's Socialist Party (PSP) and was widely expected to make large gains—with some opinion polls predicting a narrow win—fell short of expectations and lost ground when compared to the combined totals for the PSOE–PSP alliance in the 1977 election. The Communist Party of Spain obtained the best result in its history, whereas Manuel Fraga's Democratic Coalition (CD)—an electoral bloc formed by the People's Alliance, the Liberal Citizens Action and the Progressive Democratic Party—lost nearly half of its seats. The election would also see the best showing of the far-right in Spain until the April 2019 election, as Blas Piñar-led National Union would secure one seat with 2.1% of the vote share.
As a result of the election, Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez went on to form a UCD minority government, depending on support from the CD and other minor parties such as the Socialist Party of Andalusia–Andalusian Party, the Regionalist Aragonese Party and the Navarrese People's Union.
Overview Under the 1978 Constitution, the Spanish were conceived as an imperfect bicameral system.. summarizing . The Congress of Deputies held greater legislative power than the Senate, having the ability to grant or withdraw confidence from a prime minister and to override Senate vetoes by an absolute majority.. Nonetheless, the Senate retained a limited number of specific functions—such as ratifying international treaties, authorizing cooperation agreements between autonomous communities, enforcing direct rule, regulating interterritorial compensation funds, and taking part in constitutional amendments and in the appointment of members to the Constitutional Court and the General Council of the Judiciary—which were not subject to override by Congress.. The electoral and procedural rules were the same as those used in the 1977 election.; .
Date The term of the Spanish elected in the 1977 election was not to be continued beyond 15 June 1981, in the event they were not dissolved earlier.. The election decree was required to be issued after the expiration date of parliament, with election day taking place within from 55 to 60 days after the decree's publication in the Official State Gazette (BOE),; . setting the latest possible date for election day on 14 August 1981.
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 after a 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.. Barring this exception, there was no constitutional requirement for simultaneous elections to the Congress and the Senate. summarizing . Still, as of , there has been no precedent of separate elections taking place under the 1978 Constitution.
The were officially dissolved on 1 January 1979 with the publication of the corresponding decree in the BOE, setting election day for 1 March.. The Congress and the Senate were scheduled to reconvene on 23 and 27 March, respectively.; .
Electoral system Voting for each chamber of the was based on universal suffrage, comprising all Spanish nationals over 18 years of age with full political rights.; .
The Congress of Deputies had a minimum of 300 and a maximum of 400 seats, with electoral provisions fixing its size at 350. Of these, 348 were elected in 50 multi-member constituencies corresponding to the provinces of Spain—each of which was assigned an initial minimum of two seats and the remaining 248 distributed in proportion to population, roughly one seat per 144,500 inhabitants or fraction above 70,000—using the D'Hondt method and closed-list proportional voting, with a three percent-threshold of valid votes (including blank ballots) in each constituency. The remaining two seats were allocated to Ceuta and Melilla as single-member districts elected by plurality voting.; . The use of this electoral method resulted in a higher effective threshold depending on district magnitude and vote distribution.
As a result of the aforementioned allocation, each Congress multi-member constituency was entitled to the following seats:; .
Seats Constituencies 33 Barcelona 32 Madrid 15 Valencia 12 Seville 10 Biscay, Oviedo 9 Alicante, La Coruña 8 Cádiz, Málaga, Murcia, Pontevedra, Zaragoza 7 Badajoz, Córdoba, Granada, Guipúzcoa, Jaén, Santa Cruz de Tenerife 6 Balearics, Las Palmas, León 5 Almería, Cáceres, Castellón, Ciudad Real, Gerona, Huelva, Lugo, Navarre, Orense, Santander, Tarragona, Toledo, Valladolid 4 Álava, Albacete, Burgos, Cuenca, Lérida, Logroño, Salamanca, Zamora 3 Ávila, Guadalajara, Huesca, Palencia, Segovia, Soria, Teruel
208 Senate seats were elected using open-list partial block voting: voters in constituencies electing four seats could choose up to three candidates; in those with two or three seats, up to two; and in single-member districts, one. Each of the 47 peninsular provinces was allocated four seats, while in insular provinces—such as the Balearic and Canary Islands—the districts were the islands themselves, with the larger ones (Mallorca, Gran Canaria and Tenerife) being allocated three seats each, and the smaller ones (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 for every million inhabitants.; .
The law provided for by-elections to fill vacant seats in the Congress only when results in a constituency were annulled by a final sentence following an electoral petition; otherwise, vacancies arising after the proclamation of candidates and during the legislative term were filled by the next candidates on the party lists or, when required, by designated substitutes. Additionally for the Senate, by-elections were required to fill any seat vacated within the first two years of the legislative term..
Candidates Nomination rules Spanish citizens with the right to vote could run for election. Causes of ineligibility applied to the following officials:; . Holders of a number of senior public or institutional posts, including the heads and members of higher courts and state institutions; the Ombudsman; high-ranking officials of government departments and other state agencies; government delegates in the autonomous communities and civil governors; members of electoral commissions; and the chairs of national trade unions; Judges and public prosecutors in active service; Members of the Armed Forces and law enforcement bodies in active service.
Other ineligibility provisions also applied to a number of territorial officials in these categories within their areas of jurisdiction.
Incompatibility rules included those of ineligibility (except for chairs of national trade unions), and also barred combining legislative roles (deputy and senator).; .
Parties and lists
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 were required to inform the relevant electoral commission within 15 days of the election call, whereas groupings of electors needed to secure the signature of at least one permille—and, in any case, 500 signatures—of the electorate in the constituencies for which they sought election, disallowing electors from signing for more than one list..
Below is a list of the main parties and alliances which contested the election:
Candidacy Parties andalliances Leading candidate Ideology Previous result Congress Senate Vote % Seats Vote % Seats UCD Adolfo Suárez Centrism 34.4% 29.9% PSOE Felipe González Social democracyDemocratic socialismMarxism 33.8% 29.7% PCE Santiago Carrillo Eurocommunism 9.3% 2.0% CD Manuel Fraga Conservatism 8.4% 9.2% CiU Jordi Pujol Catalan nationalismCentrism 3.8% 2.6% EAJ/PNV Xabier Arzalluz Basque nationalismChristian democracy 1.6% 3.3% ERC–FNC Heribert Barrera Catalan nationalismLeft-wing nationalismSocial democracy 0.8% colspan="2" EE Juan María Bandrés Basque nationalismSocialism 0.3% 0.2% PAR Hipólito Gómez de las Roces RegionalismConservatism 0.2% 0.6% UN Blas Piñar UltranationalismNational catholicismFrancoism 0.6% 1.1% HB Francisco Letamendia Basque independenceAbertzale leftRevolutionary socialism 0.2% 0.2% PSC–ERC Josep Andreu CatalanismSocial democracy colspan="2" PSUC–PTC Josep Benet CommunismMarxism-LeninismRepublicanism colspan="2" CDG Valentín Paz Andrade GalicianismProgressivism colspan="2" 1.2% AM Miguel Cabrera Insularism colspan="2" 0.0% PSA–PA Alejandro Rojas-Marcos Andalusian nationalismSocial democracy colspan="4" UPC Fernando Sagaseta Canarian nationalismSocialism colspan="4" UPN Jesús Aizpún Navarrese regionalismConservatismChristian democracy colspan="4"
Opinion polls
Results Congress of Deputies