1896 Spanish general election

1896 Spanish general election

← 1893 12 April 1896 (Congress) 26 April 1896 (Senate) 1898 →
All 401 seats in the Congress of Deputies and 180 (of 360) seats in the Senate 201 seats needed for a majority in the Congress of Deputies
First party Second party Third party   Leader Antonio Cánovas del Castillo Práxedes Mateo Sagasta Francisco Silvela Party Conservative Liberal Silvelist Leader since 1874 1872 1892 Leader's seat Hellín Logroño Piedrahita Last election 72 seats[a] 255 seats[a] 17 seats Seats won 272 98 12 Seat change 200 157 5
Prime Minister before election Antonio Cánovas del Castillo Conservative Prime Minister after election Antonio Cánovas del Castillo Conservative

The 1896 Spanish general election was held on Sunday, 12 April and on Sunday, 26 April 1896, to elect the 7th Restoration Cortes of the Kingdom of Spain. All 401 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as 180 of 360 seats in the Senate.^[1]

Overview[]

Background[]

The Spanish Constitution of 1876 enshrined Spain as a constitutional monarchy, awarding the King power to name senators and to revoke laws, as well as the title of commander-in-chief of the army. The King would also play a key role in the system of El Turno Pacífico (the Peaceful Turn) by appointing and toppling governments and allowing the opposition to take power. Under this system, the Conservative and Liberal parties alternated in power by means of election rigging, which they achieved through the encasillado, using the links between the Ministry of Governance, the provincial civil governors, and the local bosses (caciques) to ensure victory and exclude minor parties from the power sharing.^[2]

Electoral system[]

The Spanish Cortes were envisaged as "co-legislative bodies", based on a nearly perfect bicameralism. Both the Congress of Deputies and the Senate had legislative, control and budgetary functions, sharing equal powers except for laws on contributions or public credit, where the Congress had preeminence.^[3][4] Voting for the Cortes was on the basis of universal manhood suffrage, which comprised all national males over twenty-five, having at least a two-year residency in a municipality and in full enjoyment of their civil rights.^[5]

For the Congress of Deputies, 88 seats were elected using a partial block voting in 26 multi-member constituencies, with the remaining 313 being elected under a one-round first-past-the-post system in single-member districts. Candidates winning a plurality in each constituency were elected. In constituencies electing eight seats or more, electors could vote for no more than three candidates less than the number of seats to be allocated; in those with more than four seats and up to eight, for no more than two less; in those with more than one seat and up to four, for no more than one less; and for one candidate in single-member districts. The Congress was entitled to one member per each 50,000 inhabitants, with each multi-member constituency being allocated a fixed number of seats: 8 for Madrid, 5 for Barcelona and Palma, 4 for Seville and 3 for Alicante, Almería, Badajoz, Burgos, Cádiz, Cartagena, Córdoba, Granada, Jaén, Jerez de la Frontera, La Coruña, Lugo, Málaga, Murcia, Oviedo, Pamplona, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Santander, Tarragona, Valencia, Valladolid and Zaragoza. The law also provided for by-elections to fill seats vacated throughout the legislature.^[3][6][7]

For the Senate, 180 seats were indirectly elected, with electors voting for delegates instead of senators. Elected delegates—equivalent in number to one-sixth of the councillors in each municipal corporation—would then vote for senators using a write-in, two-round majority voting system. The provinces of Álava, Albacete, Ávila, Biscay, Cuenca, Guadalajara, Guipúzcoa, Huelva, Logroño, Matanzas, Palencia, Pinar del Río, Puerto Príncipe, Santa Clara, Santander, Santiago de Cuba, Segovia, Soria, Teruel, Valladolid and Zamora were allocated two seats each, whereas each of the remaining provinces was allocated three seats, for a total of 147. The remaining 33 were allocated to a number of institutions, electing one seat each—the Archdioceses of Burgos, Granada, Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Cuba, Seville, Tarragona, Toledo, Valencia, Valladolid and Zaragoza; the Royal Spanish Academy; the Royal Academies of History, Fine Arts, Sciences, Moral and Political Sciences and Medicine; the Universities of Madrid, Barcelona, Granada, Havana, Oviedo, Salamanca, Santiago, Seville, Valencia, Valladolid and Zaragoza; and the Economic Societies of Friends of the Country from Madrid, Barcelona, Cuba–Puerto Rico, León, Seville and Valencia. An additional 180 seats comprised senators in their own right—the Monarch's offspring and the heir apparent once coming of age; Grandees of Spain of the first class; Captain Generals of the Army and the Navy Admiral; the Patriarch of the Indies and archbishops; as well as other high-ranking state figures—and senators for life (who were appointed by the Monarch).^[8][9][10]

Election date[]

The term of each House of the Cortes—the Congress and one-half of the elective part of the Senate—expired five years from the date of their previous election, unless they were dissolved earlier. The Monarch had the prerogative to dissolve both Houses at any given time—either jointly or separately—and call a snap election.^[3][6][8]

Results[]

Congress of Deputies[]

← Summary of the 12 April 1896 Congress of Deputies election results →

Parties and coalitions			Seats
			Seats	+/−
		Liberal Conservative Party (Ministerials) (PLC)	272	+200
		Liberal Conservative Party (PLC)	271	+201
		Basque Dynastics (Din.v)	1	–1
		Conservative Union (UC)	12	–5
Total Conservatives			284	+195
		Liberal Party (PL)	98	–157
Total Liberals			98	–157
		Traditionalist Communion (CT)	10	+3
		Independent Catholics (Cató.i)	1	+1
		Integrist Party (PI)	0	–2
Total Carlists and Traditionalists			11	+2
		Independent Republican Possibilists (Pos.i)1 2	4	–11
		Republican Union (UR)	0	–32
		Progressive Republican Party (PRP)3	0	–14
		Federal Democratic Republican Party (PRDF)	0	–9
		Independent Republicans (Rep.i)	0	–5
		Centralist Republican Party (PRC)3	0	–4
Total Republicans			4	–43
	Independents (Indep)		2	+2
	Vacants		2	+1
Total			401	±0
Sources[11][12]
Footnotes: 1 Independent Republican Possibilists results are compared to Possibilist Democratic Party totals in the 1893 election. 2 Most of the Possibilist Democratic Party joined the Liberal Fusionist Party or split into the Republican Constitutional Union, except for some independents. The UCR later merged into the National Republican Party, which aimed for election boycott and urged its supporters to abstain. 3 The Progressive Republican Party and the Centralist Republican Party aimed for election boycott and urged their supporters to abstain.

Notes[]

Bibliography[]

• Carreras de Odriozola, Albert; Tafunell Sambola, Xavier (2005) [1989]. Estadísticas históricas de España, siglos XIX-XX (PDF) (in Spanish). Vol. 1 (II ed.). Bilbao: Fundación BBVA. pp. 1072–1097. ISBN 84-96515-00-1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 September 2015.

References[]

External links[]

• Historical archive of deputies (1810–1977) from www.congreso.es, the official Congress of Deputies web portal (in Spanish)
• Elections in the Sexenio Revolucionario and the Restoration at www.historiaelectoral.com (in Spanish/Catalan)