Spanish general election 1996
The 1996 Spanish parliamentary elections took place on March 3, 1996. It was an early election to the parliament, the Cortes Generales , which consists of the two chambers Congreso de los Diputados (House of Representatives) and Senado (Senate). The congreso is politically much more important of the two chambers. The sixth legislative period after the end of the Franco dictatorship began with the elections.
Early end of the 5th legislature
In 1982, 1986 and 1989 under Felipe González, the social democratic PSOE had won an absolute majority in the Congreso (the chamber relevant for forming a government) three times in a row. In 1993 it had become the strongest party, but for its government majority it was subsequently dependent on the support of the Catalan and Basque regional parties CiU and PNV .
In the 5th legislature the corruption scandals increased, the economy came to a standstill and then there was the affair of the “state terrorism” of the GAL . As a result of these developments, the PSOE suffered a devastating defeat in the regional elections that took place in 13 of the 17 regions (Spanish: " Comunidades Autónomas ") in May 1995 .
This ultimately leads to the CiU canceling its support for the PSOE in July 1995 and calling for new elections after the end of the Spanish EU Council Presidency at the end of the year, which are then scheduled for March 3, 1996. The top candidates for the two big parties were the same as in the elections of 1989 and 1993: Prime Minister Felipe González for the PSOE and José María Aznar for the conservative PP - who is no longer undisputed in his own party . In general, it was assumed that the PP would win the election.
Congreso (House of Representatives)
The PP was indeed the strongest force in the elections, but it missed the targeted absolute majority of the seats in the congreso relatively clearly, so that now it had to look for allies (see below). The PSOE's losses were lower than expected due to its good results in Catalonia and its traditional strongholds of Andalusia and Extremadura . However, in “red” Asturias, for example, it lagged behind the conservatives for the first time in its history.
As the third force after the two big parties, the left-wing socialist IU , which was also competing in all of Spain, entered the congreso. Most of the regional parties that were already represented in the previous legislature in the Congreso succeeded in returning: from Catalonia the bourgeois CiU and the left ERC , from the Basque Country the bourgeois PNV , the social democratic EA and Herri Batasuna (the "political arm" of the ETA , whose MPs boycotted the meetings as before), the CC from the Canary Islands and the Unió Valenciana from the Valencia region . The BNG (Bloque Nacionalista Galego) from Galicia was newly represented .
Results
- Eligible voters: 32,531,833
- Turnout: 77.38% (+ 0.94% compared to 1993)
| Spanish general election, March 3rd 1996 | ||||||
| Political party | be right | % Be right | Diff. | Seats | % Seats | Diff. |
| Partido Popular (PP) | 9,716,006 | 38.79 | +4.03 | 156 | 44.57 | +15 |
| Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) | 9,425,678 | 37.63 | -1.15 | 141 | 40.29 | -18 |
| Izquierda Unida (IU) - Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds (ICV) | 2,639,774 | 10.54 | +0.99 | 21st | 6.00 | +3 |
| Convergència i Unió (CiU) | 1,151,633 | 4.60 | -0.34 | 16 | 4.57 | -1 |
| Partido Nacionalista Vasco (EAJ-PNV) | 318,951 | 1.27 | +0.03 | 5 | 1.43 | = |
| Coalición Canaria (CC) | 220.418 | 0.88 | +0.00 | 4th | 1.14 | = |
| Bloque Nacionalista Galego (BNG) | 220.147 | 0.88 | +0.34 | 2 | 0.57 | +2 |
| Herri Batasuna (HB) | 181,304 | 0.72 | -0.16 | 2 | 0.57 | = |
| Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) | 167,641 | 0.67 | -0.13 | 1 | 0.29 | = |
| Eusko Alkartasuna (EA) | 115,861 | 0.46 | -0.09 | 1 | 0.29 | = |
| Unió Valenciana (UV) | 91,575 | 0.37 | -0.11 | 1 | 0.29 | = |
| Partido Aragonés (PAR) | n / a (1) | n / A | -0.61 | 0 | 0.00 | -1 |
- (1) occurred in the 1996 elections candidates of PAR on the lists of the PP, its coalition partner in Aragon , to
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 6th legislature, the Senate consisted of 257 members: 208 directly elected and 49 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 1996 elections this was the case in all provinces. 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 March 1996 is given below:
| Composition Senate, March 1996 | ||||||
| fraction |
Senators total |
Political party |
Senators direct election |
Political party |
Senators indirectly |
|
| Partido Popular (PP) | 133 | 112 | 21st | |||
| Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) | 97 | 81 | 16 | |||
| Convergència i Unió (CiU) | 11 | 8th | 3 | |||
| Partido Nacionalista Vasco (EAJ-PNV) | 6th | 4th | 2 | |||
| Collective group (Grupo Mixto) | 10 | CC | 1 | CC | 1 | |
| EFS (1) | 1 | IU | 2 | |||
| PIL (2) | 1 | ERC | 1 | |||
| UV (3) | 1 | |||||
| CDN (4) | 1 | |||||
| EA | 1 | |||||
- (1) Voting group "Eivissa i Formentera al Senat" (independent candidacy in Ibiza with the support of the left)
- (2) Partido de Independientes de Lanzarote
- (3) Unió Valenciana
- (4) Convergencia Demócratas de Navarra
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 starting position for the formation of a stable government turned out to be difficult after the elections. The strongest party was the PP, but with the regional parties CC and UV in its camp, it only had 161 seats. The left (PSOE, IU and the regional parties EA, ERC and BNG) had 166 seats. A reissue of the alliance from the 5th legislature (PSOE, CiU and PNV) could only have counted on 162 members. None of these “natural constellations” thus achieved an absolute majority of 176 mandates.
It should be mentioned here that the Spanish party system is not only oriented on the usual left-right axis, but also on another one, which affects the attitude to the question of the autonomy of the regions (from one extreme of the central state to at least in the Basque Country and Catalonia to find other independence from "Castilian" Spain). In the Basque Country and Catalonia, where the aspirations for autonomy are strongest, this led to the development of their own party landscapes: On the left, alongside the all-Spanish parties PSOE and IU, there are left-wing nationalists (ERC in Catalonia, EA in the Basque Country), on the right, alongside the PP, there are bourgeois-nationalists (CiU in Catalonia, PNV in the Basque Country).
If the PP (traditionally opponent of greater regional autonomy) wanted to appoint the Prime Minister after 13 years of PSOE government, it had to seek an understanding with the regional parties (in Spanish: "nationalists") of the CiU and PNV. This turned out to be all the more complicated as, in anticipation of a secure majority in the election campaign, she had not dealt exactly with the nationalists now needed as allies.
Due to the election results, the formation of a government against the PP was practically impossible. However, there was strong internal party resistance to support for the PP in the CiU and PNV. Initially, the CiU tried to win the PSOE to abstain in the second ballot of the election for prime minister in the congreso (which takes place openly). Since a simple majority is sufficient in the second ballot, the PP candidate Aznar could have been elected head of government with the votes of his party alone without the 16 CiU MPs having to publicly vote “Yes”.
negotiations
But since the socialists refused, both the PP and the nationalists had no choice but to enter into negotiations on tolerance agreements (“ pactos de legislatura ”) in order to prevent new elections. So the PP started bilateral talks with the CC , CiU and PNV (all of which were in their respective regional governments at the time). The main participants on the conservative side were Aznar himself, the future Minister of Economics and Finance Rodrigo Rato, and the future Minister of the Interior, Jaime Mayor Oreja . For the CiU, the negotiations were largely determined by the Catalan Prime Minister Jordi Pujol and the parliamentary group leader Joaquim Molins, for the PNV by the party chairman Xabier Arzalluz and the parliamentary group chairman Iñaki Anasagasti, and for the CC by the Canarian government leader Manuel Hermoso . The main subject of the discussions was the relationship between the state as a whole and the regions, their competencies and funding. All-Spanish topics played almost no role.
PP and CC
The negotiations with the Canarian "nationalists", which were concluded at the beginning of April, turned out to be the least problematic. The key points of the agreement were the completion of the process of reform of the Canarian autonomy status (regional constitution, which requires the approval of the Cortes Generales ), which began in 1992, and the establishment of the Canary Islands' status as an "outermost region" within the EU during the negotiations on the Treaty of Amsterdam and the further development of the special tax regulations applicable to the Canary Islands due to their island location. The PP also promised that the new central government's infrastructure investments on the islands would be at least equal to the Spanish average per inhabitant.
PP and CiU
The talks with the Catalan CiU were much more difficult and protracted.
The main point of negotiation was to improve the financing of the regions. Very early on in the course of the negotiations, it was agreed in principle to increase the regions' share of the income tax collected in their respective area from 15% to 30%. The difficulties arose, however, in the detailed questions of this reform: Without corrective mechanisms, this would have led to a preference for rich, taxable regions (such as Catalonia) over poorer ones (some of which, such as Galicia, were ruled by the PP), so it turned out the question of whether and how a “financial equalization”. Another problem arose from the fact that the Spanish regions (in contrast to the German federal states, for example) do not all have the same skills and therefore do not have comparable financial needs. Via its own police z. B. have (and still have) only Catalonia, the Basque Country and Navarre . The particularly financially intensive areas of education and health care had not yet been transferred to all regions in 1996. Final answers to these questions could not be found. The final document of the negotiations is limited to the main features.
After two months of negotiations, the final version of the tolerance agreement was not finalized until the end of April and was approved by the internal party bodies of the CiU on April 28th. Further essential points of the agreement were: Abolition of the institution of the civil governor (" Gobernador Civil " - representative of the Madrid central government and head of state administration in the provinces with the rank of political official), the transfer of responsibility for active labor market policy and the seaports (however not also for the airports, as requested by the CiU) on the regions, the abolition of compulsory military service by 2001, the participation of representatives of the regions in the Spanish EU negotiating delegations and the transfer of responsibility for the road traffic police in Catalonia to the regional government Generalitat .
PP and PNV
The negotiations with the Basque nationalists dragged on a little longer (until April 30).
In mathematical terms, the approval of the five PNV MPs, along with CiU and CC, to take over government was not necessary. However, the interior minister-designate and chairman of the Basque PP Mayor Oreja was particularly interested in binding the PNV as the most important nationalist party in the Basque Country through concessions to the new government. Otherwise, it was feared that the PNV would move closer to more radical nationalist parties. This would have made attempts by the new government to pacify the situation in the Basque Country much more difficult.
The PNV entered the negotiations with a catalog of 43 powers (" traspasos pendientes ") to be transferred from the central state to the Basque Country according to the Basque Statute of Autonomy of 1979 . Among them was the administration of the social security, but Aznar declared its unified Spanish fund (" caja única ") to be non-negotiable.
The final document was limited on this point to the declaration of intent to bring the outstanding transfers of powers to an end in this legislature. In addition, a further development of the " Concierto Económico " (system that regulates financial relations between the Basque Country and the central government) and a. agreed through the adoption of the consumption taxes on alcohol, tobacco and fuel in the same and an extension of the Basque normative competences on income tax. Further points of the agreement were the guarantee of the central state for the financing of the "Basque Pact for further education" and the promise of the return of the property of the PNV confiscated during the Franco dictatorship.
Election of the Prime Minister
After this two-month negotiation process, Aznar was elected Prime Minister on May 4, 1996 with 181 votes from PP, CiU, PNV and CC, with one abstention (Unió Valenciana) and 166 against (PSOE, IU, BNG, ERC and EA) by the Chamber of Deputies . The members of the new cabinet were all provided by the PP, since the agreements with the nationalists were only toleration and not coalition agreements.
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Result | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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May 4, 1996 necessary: absolute majority (176/350) |
Yes | 156 | 16 | 5 | 4th |
181/350 |
|||||||
| No | 141 | 21st | 2 | 1 | 1 |
166/350 |
||||||||
| abstention | 1 |
1/350 |
||||||||||||
| Absent | 2 |
2/350 |
See also
Political parties in Spain
electoral system (Spain)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Javier Ayuso, “Andalucía, Catalunya y Extremadura 'salvan' a los socialistas”, El País March 4, 1996
- ↑ Carlos Yárnoz, "Aznar gana, pero necesita para pactos gobernar" El País March 4, 1996
- ↑ Juan Altable, “La visión de España del Partido Popular”, El País April 8, 1996
- ↑ Juan G. Ibáñez, "Aznar logra el apoyo de Coalición Canaria para su investidura y para gobernar los próximos cuatro años", El País April 12, 1996
- ↑ Carles Pastor / T. Cendrós, "Pujol dice que el pacto 'no es un apaño', sino una apuesta por la estabilidad de la política española", El País April 29, 1996
- ↑ Carles Pastor, “Los contenidos del pacto”, El País April 26, 1996
- ↑ Luis R. Aizpeolea, "Aznar quiere incorporar al PNV al pacto antes de la investidura", El País April 28, 1996
- ↑ Luis R. Aizpeolea, "43 peticiones des traspasos en tres folios apretados", El País March 21, 1996
- ↑ Luis R. Aizpeolea, "Aznar ASEGURA a Arzalluz que el completará Estatuto de Gernika en esta legislatura" El País March 21, 1996
- ^ "Hacia el desarrollo del Estatuto de Gernika", El País May 1, 1996
- ↑ Camilo Valdecantos, "Aznar, investido presidente, lleva al Gobierno al PP", El País May 5, 1996
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