1876 Spanish general election


The 1876 Spanish general election was held from Thursday, 20 January to Tuesday, 15 February 1876, to elect the Constituent Restoration Cortes of the Kingdom of Spain. All 391 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as all 196 seats in the Senate. On 5 April 1877, another election to the Senate was held.
This was the first election held after the end of the First Spanish Republic in 1874. The newly-founded Liberal Conservative Party of Antonio Cánovas del Castillo won an overall majority of seats. The result of the election would pave the way for the adoption of the Spanish Constitution of 1876, marking the starting point of the Bourbon Restoration that would last until 1931.

Overview

Background

The pronunciamiento—a military coup—of Arsenio Martínez Campos on 29 December 1874 put an end to the First Spanish Republic and hastened the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in the figure of Alfonso XII, son of former Queen Isabel II. An interim government led by Cánovas del Castillo was confirmed by King Alfonso XII upon disembarking in Barcelona on 9 January 1875.

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. Voting for the Cortes was on the basis of universal manhood suffrage, which comprised all national males over twenty-one and in full enjoyment of their civil rights.
For the Congress of Deputies, 391 seats were elected using the first-past-the-post method under a one-round system. Candidates winning a plurality in each constituency were elected. The provinces of Spain were divided into single-member districts, with each province entitled to one district per each 40,000 inhabitants or fraction greater than 20,000. The law also provided for by-elections to fill seats vacated throughout the legislature.
For the Senate, 196 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. Each province was allocated four seats.

Election date

The term of each House of the Cortes—the Congress and one-quarter of the Senate—expired three 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.

Results

Congress of Deputies