Spanish parliamentary elections 2011

← 2008Spanish parliamentary elections 20112015 →

 %

50

40

30th

20th

10

0

44.63

28.76

6.92

4.70

4.17

1.51

1.37

1.06

6.88

PP

PSOE

IU

UPYD

CiU

EAJ / PNV ^f

Amaiur ^g

ERC

Otherwise.

Gains and losses

compared to 2008

 % p

   6th

   4th

   2

   0

  -2

  -4

  -6

  -8th

-10

-12

-14

-16

+4.71

-15.09

+3.15

+3.51

+1.14

+0.32

+1.06

-0.10

+1.02

PP

PSOE

IU

UPYD

CiU

EAJ / PNV ^f

Amaiur ^g

ERC

Otherwise.

Remarks:

^f 2008: in Navarra together with EA, Aralar and IU ( Batzarre ) as Nafarroa Bai ; counted here under "other"

^g 2008: as EA and Aralar

Distribution of seats in the House of Representatives

             

A total of 350 seats

• IU : 11
• Amaiur : 7
• BNG : 2
• Compromís : 1
• ERC : 3
• PSOE : 110
• GBai : 1
• UPYD : 5
• CC : 2
• EAJ / PNV : 5
• CiU : 16
• FAC : 1
• PP : 186

Allocation of seats in the Senate

       

A total of 266 seats

• Amaiur : 3
• PSOE - ICV - EUiA : 76
• Otherwise: 0
• CC : 2
• EAJ / PNV : 5
• CiU : 13
• FAC : 1
• PP : 166

Mariano Rajoy ( PP )

Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba ( PSOE )

Cayo Lara ( IU )

The 2011 Spanish general election took place on November 20, 2011 . These were early elections in which the members of the two chambers of the Cortes Generales were determined for the tenth legislative period since the 1978 constitution ( Xth legislature ).

Premature end of the legislative period

In the last parliamentary election in 2008 , the PSOE emerged as the strongest force for the second time since 2004, but failed to achieve an absolute majority in the House of Representatives ( Congreso de los Diputados ) with 169 of 350 members. Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero formed a minority government that relied on the approval or benevolent abstention of the regional parties (in particular the Catalan CiU and the Basque PNV ) for the implementation of controversial bills .

Right from the start, the legislative period was marked by an extremely sharp confrontation between the two major parties, the ruling social democratic PSOE and the conservative PP .

From 2008 onwards , Spain was hit particularly hard and for a long time by the global economic and financial crisis - mainly due to its great dependence on the construction sector. Unemployment rose from 8% in 2007 to 11% (2008), 18% (2009) and over 20% (2010). Youth unemployment (young people under 25 years of age) even rose to 42% in 2010. In order to contain the national deficit, the government was forced to take unpopular measures such as raising the retirement age. In May 2011, the dissatisfaction, especially among the Spanish youth, culminated in the Movimiento 15-M protest movement , whose sympathizers kept central places in cities across the country occupied for weeks at a time.

Finally, the PSOE suffered heavy losses in the regional and local elections on May 22, 2011 . She also resigned from government responsibility in previous strongholds such as Asturias , Extremadura or Castile-La Mancha . At the municipal level, it lost the mayor's post of major cities such as Barcelona and Seville .

Zapatero had already announced in April 2011 that he would no longer be available as Prime Minister after the next election. However, until July 29, 2011, he always publicly emphasized that he wanted to take full advantage of the current legislative period, which would have meant elections in March 2012.

On July 29, 2011, however, Prime Minister Zapatero announced early elections for November 20, 2011.

By decree of September 26, 2011, the Cortes Generales of the IX. Legislature under Art. 115 of the Spanish Constitution officially dissolved by King Juan Carlos I on the proposal of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero ( PSOE ). The dissolution decree was published on September 27, 2011 in the Boletín Oficial del Estado and at the same time new elections were scheduled for the 54th day after the publication of the decree, i.e. November 20, 2011, in accordance with the provisions of the electoral law.

Top candidates

Former Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba (PSOE), Mariano Rajoy (PP) and Cayo Lara ( IU ) ran as the top candidates of the three national parties .

Results

House of Representatives

The conservative PP achieved the best result in its history and a comfortable absolute majority. The previously ruling social democratic PSOE lost a third of its mandates and achieved the worst result since 1975.

With the left-wing socialist IU and the left-wing liberal UPyD, the third and fourth strongest national party, as well as the Catalan bourgeois CiU, were able to record considerable profits .

The left-wing Basque nationalist electoral alliance Amaiur was able to repeat Bildu's success in the 2011 local elections and, in terms of votes in the Basque Country, was only shortly behind the Basque-bourgeois EAJ-PNV , and even ahead of it in terms of the number of seats it won.

The regional parties ERC (Pan-Catalan left), BNG (Galician left) and Coalición Canaria were able to keep the number of their representatives from the previous legislative period. The left-wing Valencian electoral alliance Compromís-Q and the FAC are each newly represented in the House of Representatives .

The results in detail:

Parliamentary election 2011 (Congreso) - distribution of seats

Parliamentary election 2011 (Congreso) - majority parties in the constituencies

• Eligible voters: 35,779,491
• Voters: 24,666,392 (turnout: 68.94%; -4.91% compared to 2008)
• valid votes: 24,348,837
• invalid votes: 317,555

← Spanish parliamentary elections, November 20, 2011 →
Political party	be right	% Be right	Diff.	Seats	Diff.
Partido Popular (PP)	10,866,566	44.63	+4.52	186	+32
Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE)	7.003.511	28.76	-15.11	110	-59
Izquierda Unida (IU)	1,685,991	6.92	+2.84	11	+9
Unión Progreso y Democracia (UPyD)	1,143,225	4.70	+3.51	5	+4
Convergència i Unió (CiU)	1,015,691	4.17	+1.14	16	+6
Partido Nacionalista Vasco (EAJ-PNV)	366.732	1.51	+0.32	6th	-1
Amaiur	334,498	1.37	+1.05	7th	+7
Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC)	256.985	1.06	-0.10	3	=
Bloque Nacionalista Galego (BNG)	184.037	0.76	-0.07	2	=
Coalición Canaria - Nueva Canarias (CC-NC-PNC)	143,881	0.59	-0.24	2	=
Compromís-Q	125.306	0.51	+0.39	1	+1
Foro de Ciudadanos (FAC)	99,473	0.41	+0.41	1	+1
other nominations	789.480	3.24		0
blank ballot papers	333,461	1.37

The result (votes and seats) in the individual autonomous communities (regions) and the two autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla:

	PP	PSOE	IU	UPyD	CiU	EAJ- PNV	Amaiur	ERC	BNG	CC-NC- PNC	Compromís- Q	FAC	Total seats
Andalusia	45.57% 33	36.60% 25	8.27% 2	4.77% 0									60
Aragon	47.70% 8	31.52% 4	10.53% 1	5.77% 0									13
Asturias	35.40% 3	29.34% 3	13.24% 1	3.91% 0								14.68% 1	8th
Balearic Islands	49.59% 5	28.87% 3	4.94% 0	4.23% 0				1.07% 0					8th
Basque Country	17.81% 3	21.55% 4	3.69% 0	1.80% 0		27.41% 5	24.11% 6						18th
Extremadura	51.18% 6	37.19% 4	5.70% 0	3.46% 0									10
Galicia	52.53% 15	27.81% 6	4.11% 0	1.21% 0					11.18% 2				23
Canaries	47.97% 9	24.85% 4	4.31% 0	2.64% 0						15.47% 2			15th
Cantabria	52.17% 4	25.23% 1	3.59% 0	3.59% 0									5
Castile-La Mancha	55.81% 14	30.34% 7	5.78% 0	4.96% 0									21st
Castile and Leon	55.37% 21	29.19% 11	5.64% 0	6.12% 0									32
Catalonia	20.70% 11	26.66% 14	8.09% 3	1.15% 0	29.35% 16			7.07% 3					47
La Rioja	54.70% 3	31.09% 1	4.60% 0	5.96% 0									4th
Madrid	50.97% 19	26.05% 10	8.04% 3	10.30% 4								0.20% 0	36
Murcia	64.22% 8	20.99% 2	5.70% 0	6.26% 0									10
Navarre	38.21% 2	22.02% 1	5.51% 0	2.06% 0		12.81% 1	14.86% 1						5
Valencia	53.32% 20	26.75% 10	6.51% 1	5.60% 1				0.29% 0			4.81% 1		33
Ceuta	65.93% 1	20.26% 0	1.81% 0	3.34% 0									1
Melilla	66.71% 1	25.32% 0		3.71% 0									1

According to Article 23 of the House of Representatives' rules of procedure, at least 15 members are required to form a parliamentary group. Five seats are sufficient if the election proposals of the MPs who want to form the parliamentary group (and who can also belong to different parties) have received a total of at least five percent of the vote or at least 15 percent in the constituencies in which the groups are up for election have started.

The following fractions were formed:

• PP with 185 MPs (excluding the UPN MP elected from the PP-UPN joint list in Navarre)
• PSOE with 110 MPs
• CiU with 16 members
• IU with 11 MPs
• UPyD with 5 MPs
• EAJ-PNV with 5 MPs (excluding the non-party Uxue Barkos Berruezo, who was elected via the Geroa Bai list in Navarra)

The remaining 18 non-attached MPs (Amaiur 7, ERC 3, BNG 2, CC-NC 2, UPN 1, Compromís-Q 1, Geroa Bai 1, FAC 1) are automatically combined in Grupo Mixto in accordance with the rules of procedure .

The Presidium of the Chamber rejected the formation of a separate parliamentary group for Amaiur, as this formation had achieved more than 15% in each of the three constituencies of Álava, Guipúzcoa and Vizcaya, but not in the fourth constituency (Navarra), in which they also ran was (14.86%).

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 autonomous communities (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 10th legislature, the Senate consists of 266 members: 208 directly elected and 58 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 2011 elections this was only not the case in the province of Tarragona, where two candidates each from the CiU and the Entesa were elected. There is therefore a form of majority voting (see elections in Spain ).

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 November 2011 is given below:

Composition of the Senate after the election

← Composition Senate, November 2011 →
Political party	Senators total	Senators direct election	Senators indirectly
Partido Popular (PP)	166	136	30th
Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE)	66	48	18th
Entesa pel Progrés de Catalunya ( PSC - EUiA - IC-V )	10	7th	3
Convergència i Unió (CiU)	13	9	4th
Partido Nacionalista Vasco (EAJ-PNV)	5	4th	1
Coalición Canaria - Nueva Canarias (CC-NC-PNC)	2	1	1
Foro de Ciudadanos (FAC)	1	0	1
Amaiur	3	3	0

Government formation

According to the Spanish constitution, only the House of Representatives is relevant for the formation of a government: it elects the Prime Minister (Art. 99), the government is responsible only to him (Art. 108).

On December 20, Mariano Rajoy was elected with 187 votes in favor (PP, UPN, FAC), 14 abstentions (Amaiur, EAJ-PNV, CC-NC) and 149 against (PSOE, CiU, IU, ERC, UPyD, BNG, Compromís -Q and Geroa Bai) elected Prime Minister.

He formed the Rajoy I cabinet .

Election of the Prime Minister Xth Legislature

candidate	date															Result
Mariano Rajoy	December 20, 2011 required: absolute majority (176/350)	Yes	186											1		187/350
		No		110	11	5	16			3	2		1		1	149/350
		abstention						7th	5			2				14/350

Web links

• Preliminary official final result (Spanish Ministry of the Interior) (Spanish)
• Homepage of the Junta Electoral Central (Central Electoral Committee) - u. a. Legal texts (Spanish; electoral law also in English)
• Website of the Spanish Ministry of the Interior on the elections (Spanish)
• Publication of the nominations in the Boletín Oficial del Estado (PDF, 10.1 MiB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Encuesta de Población Activa. Instituto Nacional de Estadística, accessed on August 3, 2011 (Spanish, the unemployment rate can be found under “tasa de paro”). 
2. ^ Paro juvenil, del éxito al fracaso en cuatro años. In: El País. January 26, 2011, accessed August 3, 2011 (Spanish). 
3. ↑ Zapatero will not run for re-election in 2012. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. April 2, 2011, accessed August 3, 2011 . 
4. ↑ New elections in Spain - government surrenders to debt crisis. Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 29, 2011, accessed on August 3, 2011 . 
5. ↑ Real Decreto 1329/2011. (PDF; 175 kB) In: Boletín Oficial del Estado. September 27, 2011, Retrieved September 27, 2011 (Spanish). 
6. ^ Junta Electoral Central: Publication of the official final result. (PDF; 4.0 MB) In: Boletín Oficial del Estado. December 10, 2011, Retrieved December 14, 2011 (Spanish). 
7. ^ In Aragon (constituencies Zaragoza, Teruel and Huesca) electoral alliance of PP and the regional party PAR ; in Extremadura (constituencies Badajoz and Cáceres) electoral alliance of PP and the regional party Extremadura Unida (EU); in the constituency of Navarra, electoral alliance of PP and the regional party UPN
8. ↑ Comparison with the results of PP, UPN, PAR and EU in the 2008 election
9. ↑ Thereof 185 PP and one UPN .
10. ↑ in Catalonia (constituencies of Barcelona, ​​Girona, Lleida and Tarragona): Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC)
11. ↑ Including 96 PSOE and 14 PSC
12. ↑ IU's electoral alliance with 12 other left-wing parties ( Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds , Esquerra Unida i Alternativa , Chunta Aragonesista , Socialistas Independientes de Extremadura , Batzarre-Asamblea de Izquierdas , Los Verdes , Gira Madrid Los Verdes , Verds del País Valenció Verdciá , Opéra Els Verds , Canarias por la Izquierda , Iniciativa por El Hierro , Partido Democrático y Social de Ceuta )
13. ↑ Comparison with the results of IU, Los Verdes and Chunta Aragonesista in the 2008 election
14. ↑ Thereof eight IU , two ICV and one CHA
15. ↑ including the results of the Geroa Bai candidacy (electoral alliance of EAJ-PNV and the Atarrabia Taldea party in the Navarra constituency )
16. ↑ Comparison with the result of EAJ-PNV in the 2008 election
17. ^ Including five EAJ-PNV and the non- party Uxue Barkos Berruezo as the top candidate for the Geroa Bai candidacy for the constituency of Navarra.
18. ↑ Comparison with the results of EA and Aralar in the 2008 election
19. ↑ in Catalonia (constituencies of Barcelona, ​​Girona, Lleida and Tarragona): electoral alliance of ERC and the regional party Reagrupament Independentista
20. ↑ Comparison with the results of the ERC in the 2008 election
21. ↑ Electoral alliance of CC , NC and Partido Nacionalista Canario (PNC)
22. ↑ Comparison with the results of CC-PNC and NC in the 2008 election
23. ^ One member of the CC and one member of the NC
24. ↑ Electoral alliance in the Valencia region (constituencies Valencia, Castellón and Alicante) from Bloc Nacionalista Valencià , Iniciativa del Poble Valenciá , Els Verds Esquerra Ecologista del País Valenciá , Equo and Coalició Compromís
25. ↑ Comparison with the result of the electoral alliance of Bloc Nacionalista Valencià , Iniciativa del Poble Valenciá , Els Verds Esquerra Ecologista del País Valenciá in the 2008 election
26. ↑ " Votos en Blanco " are valid according to Spanish electoral law (Art. 96.5 LOREG)
27. ^ Electoral alliance of PP and PAR
28. ^ Electoral alliance of PP and Extremadura Unida
29. ↑ Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC)
30. ↑ Electoral alliance of ERC and the regional party Reagrupament Independentista
31. ^ Electoral alliance of PP and UPN
32. ↑ Candidacy Geroa Bai (electoral alliance from EAJ-PNV and the Atarrabia Taldea party )
33. ↑ Distribución de los escaños del Senado al inicio de la X Legislatura. Senado, accessed December 22, 2011 (Spanish). 
34. ^ In Aragon (constituencies Zaragoza, Teruel and Huesca) electoral alliance of PP and the regional party PAR ; in Extremadura (constituencies Badajoz and Cáceres) electoral alliance of PP and the regional party Extremadura Unida (EU); in the constituency of Navarra, electoral alliance of PP and the regional party UPN ; in the constituency of Fuerteventura electoral alliance of PP and Asambleas Municipales de Fuerteventura (AMF)
35. ↑ 129 PP , three PAR and two UPN due to the existing electoral alliances; in addition, two members of the Centro Canario Nacionalista (CCN) , who were elected through the PP's nomination without a formal electoral alliance.
36. ↑ Thereof 29 PP and one UPN
37. ↑ Electoral alliance of PSC , EUiA and IC-V in Catalonia (constituencies Barcelona, ​​Girona, Lleida and Tarragona)
38. ^ Including six PSC and one IC-V .
39. ↑ Including two PSC and one IC-V .
40. ^ Electoral alliance of CC , NC and Partido Nacionalista Canario (PNC); in the constituency of El Hierro CC , NC and Agrupación Herreña Independiente (AHI)