Spanish General Elections
AS OF 2026-07-22 · 48 CONTESTS · general election, 23 July 2023 · WIKIPEDIA, NATIONAL ELECTORAL AUTHORITIES
Next election · snap general election, 29 November 2026 · Capital · Madrid in the metro rankings →
Where the chamber sits · 5.7 of 10, left to right, spread 2.1 →
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.
PP 137PSOE 121Vox 33others 14
PSOE 120PP 89Vox 52others 31
PSOE 123PP 66Cs 57others 23
PP 137PSOE 85Unidos Podemos 71others 8
PP 123PSOE 90Podemos 69others 11
PP 186PSOE 110CiU 16others 15
PSOE 169PP 154CiU 10others 6
PSOE 164PP 148CiU 10others 8
PP 183CiU 15IU 8others 133
PP 156PSOE 141IU 21others 7
PSOE 159PP 141IU 18others 6
PSOE 175PP 107CiU 18others 14
PSOE 184AP–PDP–PL 105CDS 19others 10
PSOE 202AP–PDP 107CiU 12others 6
UCD 168PSOE 121PCE 23others 14
UCD 165PSOE 118PCE 20others 12
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.
PSOE 99CEDA 88IR 87others 124
CEDA 115PRR 102PSOE 59others 123
PSOE 115PRR 90PRRS 61others 124
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'.
Liberal Union 223Conservative 124Regionalist 22others 13
Conservative 182Liberal Democratic 40Romanonist 32others 80
Maurist–Ciervist 105Conservative 95Liberal Democratic 51others 72
Conservative 104Liberal Democratic 89Romanonist 40others 82
Liberal–Democratic 228Conservative 89Maurist 18others 34
Conservative 225Liberal 84Liberal Democratic 33others 29
Democratic–Liberal 223Conservative 110Republican–Socialist 29others 14
Conservative 256Liberal 72Solidarity 38others 8
Liberal–Democratic 226Conservative 105Republican 25others 18
Conservative 228Liberal 95Republican 28others 29
Liberal 246Conservative 76Republican 15others 28
Conservative (Silvelist) 240Liberal 92Gamacist 32others 13
Liberal 324Conservative (Silvelist) 79Republican 15others 10
Conservative 307Liberal 111Silvelist 12others 6
Liberal 298Conservative 67Republican 36others 3
Conservative 284Liberal 100Liberal Reformist 17others 10
Conservative 288Liberal Left 64Parliamentary Centre 13others 55
Conservative 317Constitutional 48Moderate 12others 40
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.
Republican 343Radical 20Conservative–Constitutional 7others 54
Radical 274Republican 78Conservative–Constitutional 14others 58
Conservative–Constitutional 236Republican 52Radical 42others 94
Monarchist–Democratic 235Republican 52Carlist 51others 52
Monarchist–Democratic 259Republican 69Carlist 23others 30
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.