Spanish General Elections
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Every Spanish general election from 1867 to 2023 — the revolutionary Sexenio, the turno pacífico's arranged results stated plainly, the Second Republic's three violent swings, the Francoist rituals, and the democratic era from the transition to today's coalitions.
General elections
48
1867–2023
Latest
2023
PP · Pedro Sánchez
Congress seats
350
176 for a majority
First free vote in 41 years
1977
the transition's founding election
The chronology
Every general election, newest first, across five eras — with the turno pacífico's arranged majorities and the Francoist rituals labelled for what they were. Click any election for the full result and the story.
The democratic era · 1977–2023
The 1977 election — the first free vote in 41 years — anchored the transition, and the 1978 Constitution followed. Since then: González's 1982 landslide, the peaceful alternations of PSOE and PP, the end of the two-party duopoly after 2015, and the coalition politics of the 2019–2023 chambers.
The Francoist Cortes · 1967–1971
Franco's 'organic democracy' allowed heads of family to elect a small fraction of a corporatist Cortes, with no parties and no opposition. These votes are recorded here as rituals of the dictatorship, not elections.
The Second Republic · 1931–1936
The Republic's three elections were mass democracy at last — women voted from 1933 — and each swung violently: a republican-socialist chamber, then a right-wing one, then the Popular Front's narrow 1936 victory, five months before the coup that began the Civil War.
The Restoration and the turno pacífico · 1876–1923
For half a century the Conservative and Liberal parties alternated in power by arrangement — the turno pacífico. The Interior Ministry's encasillado assigned winners before polling day, with rural bosses, the caciques, delivering the count. The recorded majorities are the system's product, not the voters'.
Revolution and the Sexenio · 1867–1873
The last Isabelline election of 1867 was followed by the Glorious Revolution: the 1869 vote, held under universal male suffrage, was among Europe's most democratic to date, and the turbulent Sexenio ran through a monarchy-by-invitation to the First Republic's brief life.
The long arc in charts
The democratic era since 1977. Hover any point for the exact figure.
Turnout, 1977–2023
Spain's democratic turnout peaked at the polarised 1982 and 1996 contests and has ranged through the 60s and 70s since — 2023's July election held it above 66% in high summer.
The two-party duel and its erosion
PSOE against the AP/PP line: González's 48% in 1982, the alternations of the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-2015 fragmentation that ended majority governments.
Records & superlatives
Highest democratic turnout
80.0%
1982 general election
Lowest democratic turnout
66.2%
November 2019 general election
Most seats won
202
PSOE, 1982
Highest vote share
48.1%
PSOE, 1982
Years between free elections
41
from the Popular Front of 1936 to the transition's first vote
Changes of PM at the ballot box
8
of 16 democratic elections since 1977
How Spanish general elections work
Provincial proportionality
The Congress's 350 seats are elected by closed-list PR in 52 provincial districts. Small provinces elect so few deputies that the system quietly favours the big two parties and territorially concentrated regionalists.
The investiture
Winning the election is only step one: the Congress must invest a Prime Minister by majority. Since 2015's fragmentation, investitures have taken months, produced repeat elections, and made regionalist parties kingmakers.
A young democracy's old habit
From 1876 to 1923 the two dynastic parties simply alternated by arrangement, with results fixed in advance. The memory of managed elections is why the 1977 transition built such deliberately proportional institutions.
The autonomies matter
Basque, Catalan, Galician and Canarian parties have held the balance of power repeatedly — Spanish governments are made in Madrid but sustained, or toppled, by the periphery.