22 May 2011 2015 → 2 September 2003 22 July 2000 23,348 seats, 35.6% 24,029 seats, 34.9% | Registered 34,713,813 1.3% 22 July 2000 7 January 2002 Start date May 22, 2011 | |
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Turnout 22,968,281 (66.2%)
2.2 pp | ||
The 2011 Spanish local elections were held on Sunday, 22 May in Spain, throughout all 8,116 Spain municipalities, simultaneously with regional elections in 13 of the 17 autonomous communities—all except for Andalusia, the Basque Country, Catalonia, and Galicia. All 68,230 councillors were up for election, as well as 153 seats of the 3 Basque Juntas Generales, 157 seats of the 7 Canarian cabildos, 60 seats of the 4 Balearic consells and the indirectly-elected 1,040 seats of the 38 provincial deputations.
Contents
The days before the elections were marked by the 2011 Spanish protests which had been held in different cities across Spain since 15 May. The elections resulted in a landslide victory for the opposition People's Party (PP) and other centre-right parties, which won control of all of Spain's largest cities. In Barcelona, held by PSOE-sister party, the Socialists' Party of Catalonia (PSC), since the first local elections in 1979, was won for the first time by the nationalist Convergence and Union (CiU), which also won in Girona. The PSOE only won only in 5 out of Spain's 50 provincial capitals. In the popular vote, it scored its worst result in nationwide-held local elections, with a mere 27.8%, 10 points behind the PP, which obtained 37.5%.
Following the election, the PSOE named Deputy Prime Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba as prime ministerial candidate for the next general election, initially scheduled for March 2012, and finally held in November 2011.
Local councils
The number of seats in each city council is determined by the population count. According to the municipal electoral law, the population-seat relationship on each municipality is to be established on the following scale:
Additionally, for populations greater than 100,000, 1 seat is to be added per each 100,000 inhabitants or fraction, according to the most updated census data, and adding 1 more seat if the resulting seat count gives an even number.
All city council members are elected in single multi-member districts, consisting of the municipality's territory, using the D'Hondt method and a closed-list proportional representation system. Voting is on the basis of universal suffrage in a secret ballot. Only lists polling above 5% of valid votes in all of the municipality (which include blank ballots—for none of the above) are entitled to enter the seat distribution.
The Spanish municipal electoral law establishes a clause stating that, if no candidate is to gather an absolute majority of votes to be elected as mayor of a municipality, the candidate of the most-voted party will be automatically elected to the post.
Provincial deputations
The provincial deputations were elected indirectly by a council which in turn was elected from the judicial districts. The apportionment of deputies per province depends on population and was given as follows:
Shift of control
The following table shows Spanish municipalities over 50,000 inhabitants as well as provincial capitals; the latter of which are marked in bold. Note that the party shown is not necessarily the one that won the election in each council, but rather, the one whose candidate was elected to the mayoralty.