Spanish parliamentary elections 1993
On June 6, 1993, the elections to the Spanish parliament, the Cortes Generales , which consists of the two chambers Congreso de los Diputados (House of Representatives) and Senado (Senate), took place. The congreso is politically much more important of the two chambers. The 5th legislative period after the end of the Franco dictatorship began with the elections .
Congreso (House of Representatives)
Against the incumbent Prime Minister Felipe González of the social democratic PSOE , the conservative PP sent José María Aznar into the running as the top candidate, as in 1989 .
The Christian Democratic CDS lost all 14 mandates, so that in addition to the PSOE and the PP, only the left-wing socialist IU could enter the congreso as a further party running throughout Spain. Some of the regional parties that were already represented in the previous legislature in the Congreso succeeded in returning: from Catalonia the bourgeois CiU , from the Basque Country the bourgeois PNV , the social democratic EA and Herri Batasuna (the "political arm" of the ETA , but its deputies as previously boycotted the meetings), the PAR from Aragon and the Unió Valenciana (UV) from the Valencia region . The Catalan Left Party ERC was able to regain its seat, which it had lost in the 1986 elections. The Coalición Canaria (CC), formed in 1993 from various Canarian parties and groups, was able to provide four members straight away.
Due to the disappearance of the CDS , the PP achieved its best result to date. For the fourth time in a row, the strongest party was the PSOE, which, however, after losing 16 mandates, was unable to appoint the prime minister on its own as before (see below).
Results
- Eligible voters: 31,030,511
- Turnout: 76.44% (+ 6.7% compared to 1989)
| ← Spanish parliamentary elections, June 6, 1993 → | ||||||
| Political party | be right | % Be right | Diff. | Seats | % Seats | Diff. |
| Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) | 9,150,083 | 38.78 | -0.82 | 159 | 45.43 | -16 |
| Partido Popular (PP) | 8.201.463 | 34.76 | +8.97 | 141 | 40.29 | +34 |
| Izquierda Unida (IU) - Iniciativa per Catalunya (IC) | 2,253,722 | 9.55 | +0.48 | 18th | 5.14 | +1 |
| Convergència i Unió (CiU) | 1,165,783 | 4.94 | -0.10 | 17th | 4.86 | -1 |
| Partido Nacionalista Vasco (EAJ-PNV) | 291,448 | 1.24 | +0.00 | 5 | 1.43 | = |
| Coalición Canaria (CC) | 207.077 | 0.88 | +0.88 | 4th | 1.14 | +4 |
| Herri Batasuna (HB) | 206,876 | 0.88 | -0.18 | 2 | 0.57 | -2 |
| Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) | 189,632 | 0.80 | +0.39 | 1 | 0.29 | +1 |
| Partido Aragonés (PAR) | 144,544 | 0.61 | +0.26 | 1 | 0.29 | = |
| Eusko Alkartasuna (EA) | 129,293 | 0.55 | -0.12 | 1 | 0.29 | -1 |
| Unió Valenciana (UV) | 112,341 | 0.48 | -0.23 | 1 | 0.29 | -1 |
| Centro Democrático y Social (CDS) | 414.740 | 1.76 | -6.13 | 0 | 0.00 | -14 |
| Partido Andalucista (PA) | 96,513 | 0.41 | -0.63 | 0 | 0.00 | -2 |
| Euskadiko Ezkerra (EE) | n / a (1) | n / A | -0.51 | 0 | 0.00 | -2 |
| Agrupaciones Independientes de Canarias (AIC) | n / a (2) | n / A | -0.32 | 0 | 0.00 | -1 |
Senado (Senate)
The Senate is made up of members directly elected by the people and other senators who are determined by the parliaments of the individual regions (Spanish: Comunidades Autónomas ). The direct election takes place at the same time as the elections for the members of the Congress. The number of indirectly elected senators depends on the population of the respective region (one plus another for every 1 million inhabitants).
In the 5th legislature the Senate consisted of 256 members: 208 directly elected and 48 delegated by the regional parliaments.
Direct elections take place in constituencies that correspond to the provinces (except for the Balearic and Canary Islands, where constituencies are the individual islands). In each of the provincial constituencies - regardless of the size of the population - four senators are elected, with each voter giving three votes and each party nominating three candidates. The supporter of a party will usually give his votes to the three candidates of "his" party. This usually results in the three candidates in the strongest party in the province getting more votes than the top-ranked candidate in the second strongest party. In the vast majority of cases, therefore, the strongest party will provide three senators and the second strongest party one for the province. In the 1993 elections, this was the case in all provinces except for the province of Valencia (where the PSOE and PP each won two senatorial seats) and Melilla (PSOE and PP each one). There is therefore a form of majority voting.
The composition of the senators sent by the regional parliaments can change during the legislature (if new regional parliaments are elected during the legislative period), therefore only the composition of the senate at the beginning of the legislature in June 1996 is given below:
| ← Composition Senate, June 1993 → | ||||||
| fraction |
Senators total |
Political party |
Senators direct election |
Political party |
Senators indirectly |
|
| Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) | 117 | 96 | 21st | |||
| Partido Popular (PP) | 106 | 93 | 13 | |||
| Convergència i Unió (CiU) | 15th | 10 | 5 | |||
| Coalición Canaria (CC) | 6th | 5 | 1 | |||
| Partido Nacionalista Vasco (EAJ-PNV) | 5 | 3 | 2 | |||
| Collective group (Grupo Mixto) | 7th | HB | 1 | IU | 2 | |
| PAR | 1 | |||||
| ENV (1) | 1 | |||||
| PR (2) | 1 | |||||
| EA | 1 | |||||
Government formation
Starting position
According to the Spanish constitution, only the congreso is relevant for the formation of a government: it elects the prime minister (Art. 99), the government is responsible only to him (Art. 108).
The PSOE had lost its absolute majority, but it was again the strongest party. Before the elections, the PSOE was expected to suffer much more losses. The election of a prime minister against the votes of the PSOE and IU (together 177 seats out of 350) was impossible after the election results. The support of a PP candidate for the office of head of government by these two parties was unthinkable. Because of these circumstances, it was already clear on election evening that the task of forming a government would fall to the PSOE and Felipe González .
The PSOE bodies commissioned González to lead negotiations with IU and the Catalan and Basque regional parties (in Spanish: "nationalists") CiU and PNV . The primary goal should be the formation of a coalition government in order to create a stable majority. In terms of power politics, the motive behind this was to bind the CiU and PNV (which as bourgeois parties are closer to the traditional left-right axis of the PP) as closely as possible in order to bring the nationalists closer to them - with possible consequences for later Legislative terms - to prevent.
On the part of the nationalists, on the other hand, there were considerable reservations due to the traditional policy of keeping a distance from the central government in Madrid. These were less pronounced in the PNV, which at that time was already ruling the Basque Country jointly with the PSOE, than in the CiU and its Catalan Prime Minister Jordi Pujol . In these parties there was therefore skepticism against joining a joint government with the PSOE, rather the tolerance of a sole PSOE government was advocated. There were also solid power-political motivations for this stance: Due to the difficult economic situation and corruption affairs, it was feared that the new government would not get through the full legislative period (this assessment was to be confirmed in 1995). In this case, the nationalists did not want to be too closely tied to the PSOE.
negotiations
The negotiations of the PSOE with IU and the nationalists, which began on June 16, were therefore less influenced by political content than the question of the type of cooperation ( coalition or parliamentary tolerance ).
They were accompanied by internal party disputes: in the PSOE between innovators ( renovadores ) and left traditionalists ( guerristas , after the Vice Secretary-General Alfonso Guerra), who v. a. manifested in the dispute over the post of group chairman; in the IU between traditionalists ( oficialistas ) and an opening to the PSOE towards more open-minded renewals ( renovadores ); in the CiU between the opponents of a coalition government with the PSOE around the President of the Generalitat Jordi Pujol and supporters around the group chairman in Madrid Miquel Roca.
The talks with the IU turned out to be the most difficult, due to the considerable differences in economic and European policy (especially the IU's rejection of the convergence criteria of the Maastricht Treaty ). In addition, the IU rejected a coalition with the simultaneous participation of the conservative nationalists from CiU and PNV. When the PSOE then broke the IU's written agreement by the leader of the parliamentary group of the last legislature, the guerrista Martín Toval, to leave a post in the newly elected Presidium of the Congreso after the election of the new leader of the parliamentary group, the renovador Carlos Solchaga, and instead a candidate from the PNV supported, the negotiations had finally failed. On July 5, the IU party executive decided (in the absence of the renovadores , who supported abstention) that its 18 MPs should vote against González in the election of the prime minister.
In the CiU, the coalition opponents led by Jordi Pujol prevailed on June 21, when the party decided with a clear majority to make entry into a government led by the PSOE dependent on the adoption of its entire election program, a demand that the PSOE made was unacceptable. The topics of further negotiations were economic and European policy (where there was largely agreement) as well as autonomy policy and in particular the question of the financing of the regions , for which the CiU demanded that 15% of the income tax volume be transferred to them. Without a formal tolerance agreement having been concluded beforehand, the parliamentary group leader Roca announced on July 2, as part of the constitutional consultation talks between the king and representatives of the political parties, that the 17 members of the CiU would vote for González. As a reason for this “vote without consideration” and without a programmatic agreement, the CiU cited joint responsibility for the stability and governability of Spain in an economically difficult situation; the Catalan nationalists did not rule out joining the government at a later stage in the legislature.
The coalition negotiations between the PSOE and the PNV have progressed furthest. Here, too, there was general agreement on economic and European policy, but disagreement on the question of autonomy policy. The PNV demanded the transfer of 54 competencies (“ traspasos pendientes ”) to the Basque Autonomous Community , which were still to be transferred from the central state to the Basque Country according to the Basque Statute of Autonomy of 1979 , supported by a resolution of the Basque Autonomous Community , which was also passed with the votes of the PSOE and the PP Parliament. No agreement was reached on this either, but the PNV MPs' approval for González was therefore not in question and the PSOE offered the Basque nationalists the Ministry of Industry (which was particularly attractive to them because of their interest in reindustrialising the Basque Country). Nevertheless, the PNV party congress on July 10 - one day after González was elected prime minister - rejected entry into a coalition government by a large majority due to the lack of a programmatic agreement, without ruling out such an agreement for a later legislative period.
Election of the Prime Minister
On July 9, 1993, Felipe González was elected for the fourth time with 181 votes in favor (PSOE, CiU, PNV), 165 against (PP, IU, CC, UV, EA, ERC) and one abstention (PAR) in the first ballot elected Prime Minister since 1982. In the previous debate on the government program, González had announced an imminent reform of the financing of the regions with a view to the CiU and PNV towards their “financial policy co-responsibility” and a “common interpretation” of the Basque autonomous status “in the light of the constitution”, without the specific main demands of the Nationalists (CiU: 15% of income tax, PNV: 54 traspasos pendientes ) should be explicitly mentioned.
After the PNV “No” to the coalition the following day, the PSOE alone formed the government. Even in the further course of the legislature, the nationalists did not enter the government.
| candidate | date |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Result | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
.jpg)
|
July 9, 1993 required: absolute majority (176/350) |
Yes | 159 | 17th | 5 |
181/350 |
||||||||
| No | 141 | 17th | 4th | 1 | 1 | 1 |
165/350 |
|||||||
| abstention | 1 |
1/350 |
||||||||||||
| Absent | 1 | 2 |
3/350 |
.svg){kind=small}
See also
Web links
- Results of Spanish elections since 1977 Spanish Ministry of the Interior (Spanish)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Anabel Díez, Luis R. Aizpeolea: EL PSOE da libertad a González para pactar . In: El País , June 15, 1993
- ↑ Luis R. Aizpeolea, Anabel Díez: González recibe esta mañana a Frutos y después hablará con Pujol y Arzalluz . In: El País , June 16, 1993
- ↑ Luis R. Aizpeolea: Reticencias al Gobierno de Coalición . In: El País , June 11, 1993
- ↑ Luis R. Aizpeolea, Anabel Díez: El temor al fracaso económico frena a CiU y PNV . In: El País , June 20, 1993
- ↑ Javier Rivas: IU dice no al pacto global y sí a acuerdos parciales . In: El País , June 17, 1993
- ↑ Javier Rivas: IU deja en manos de sus bases la decisión sobre un pacto con el PSOE . In: El País , June 20, 1993
- ↑ Camilo Valdecantos: González impuso la ruptura del acuerdo con IU . In: El País , June 30, 1993
- ↑ Javier Rivas: La presidencia de IU decide el 'no' des sus 18 diputados a González . In: El País , July 6, 1993
- ↑ José Antich: Convergència sólo gobernará con el PSOE si se acepta su programa íntegro . In: El País , June 22, 1993
- ↑ González cuenta con CiU para su investidura . In: El País , July 1, 1993
- ^ José Antich, Pujol justifica su 'no' a la coalición por la política autonómica del PSOE . In: El País , June 28, 1993
- ↑ a b Luis R. Aizpeolea, José Antich: CiU votará a González sin contrapartidas . In: El País , July 3, 1993
- ↑ Camilo Valdecantos: CiU apoya a González 'para hacer posible la gobernabilidad y no por coincidencia en el programa' . In: El País , July 3, 1993
- ↑ Pedro Gorospe: Arzalluz colaborará con el Gobierno, aunque no se siente español . In: El País , July 2, 1993
- ↑ Luis R. Aizpeolea: El PNV responderá antes del sábado sobre su entrada en el Gobierno en coalición con el PSOE . In: El País , July 6, 1993
- ↑ Pedro Gorospe: El PNV rechaza entrar en el Gobierno . In: El País , July 11, 1993
- ↑ Luis R. Aizpeolea, Anabel Díez: González anuncia una gran renovación del Gobierno . In: El País , July 10, 1993
- ↑ Anabel Díez, Luis R. Aizpeolea: PNV y CiU expresan su satisfacción por las concesiones en materia autonómica . In: El País , July 9, 1993
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