Turnout 59.86% 1918 1901 140 seats 14 seats Start date December 19, 1920 | 1913 1918 198 seats 140 seats 224 119 | |
 | ||
Winner Eduardo Dato | ||
General elections to the Cortes Generales were held in Spain on 19 December 1920. At stake were all 409 seats in the Congress of Deputies.
Contents
Overview
The Spanish legislature, the Cortes, was composed of two chambers at the time of the 1920 election:
This was a nearly perfect bicameral system, with the two chambers established as "co-legislative bodies". Both chambers had legislative, control and budgetary functions, sharing equal powers except for laws on contributions or public credit, where the Congress had preeminence.
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 the turno pacífico (Spanish for "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 the Interior, the provincial civil governors, and the local bosses (caciques) to ensure victory and exclude minor parties from the power sharing.
Electoral system
For the Congress of Deputies, 88 seats were allocated to 28 multi-member constituencies and awarded using a partial block voting, with the remaining 321 awarded under a first-past-the-post system in single-member districts. Instead of voting for parties, electors would vote for individual candidates. In districts electing more than one seat and up to four, electors could vote for one less candidate than seats to be filled; in those with more than four seats and up to eight, for up to two less; in those with more than eight seats and up to ten, for up to three less; and for up to four less in multi-member constituencies electing ten seats or more. Candidates winning a plurality of votes in each constituency were elected. In single-member districts were candidates ran unopposed, and in multi-member districts where the number of candidates was equal or less than the number of seats to be filled, candidates were automatically proclaimed without an election. The overall number of seats was determined by the population count, with one seat per each 50,000 inhabitants. Voting was compulsory and on the basis of universal manhood suffrage, with males over twenty-five and at least a two-year residency in a municipality required to vote. Only those above seventy years old, first instance judges, public notaries and the clergy were exempt from voting. Concurrently, secular males at least twenty-five years old were eligible for the Congress if meeting one of these requirements: (1) having previously held the position of deputy; (2) having been proposed by at least two senators or former senators, two deputies or former deputies for the same province, or three provincial or former provincial deputies within the constituency; Or (3) having been proposed by at least 0.05% of registered electors in the district.
The Senate was not a directly elected body, with its 360 members being divided into three different classes:
The Constitution of 1876 provided for 180 elective senators and an equal number of senators for the other two classes combined. Elective senators served terms of ten years each, with their terms staggered so that approximately one-half of these seats were up for appointment every five years. The King could dissolve the entirety of the elective section of the Senate at will, triggering the appointment of the full contingent of elective senators.