1886 Spanish general election

The 1886 Spanish general election was held on Sunday, 4 April (for the Congress of Deputies) and on Sunday, 25 April 1886 (for the Senate), to elect the 4th Cortes of the Kingdom of Spain in the Restoration period. All 434 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as 180 of 360 seats in the Senate. The electorate comprised about 4.6% of the country's population.

1886 Spanish general election

4 April 1886 (Congress) 25 April 1886 (Senate)
All 434 seats in the Congress of Deputies and 180 (of 360) seats in the Senate 218 seats needed for a majority in the Congress of Deputies
Registered	807,175
Turnout	475,712 (58.9%)
First party Second party Third party   Leader Práxedes Mateo Sagasta Antonio Cánovas del Castillo Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla Party Liberal Conservative Republican Leader since 1880 1874 1880 Leader's seat Logroño Cieza — Last election 43 (C) · 15 (S) 342 (C) · 140 (S) 9 (C) · 0 (S) Seats won 308 (C) · 124 (S) 71 (C) · 33 (S) 20 (C) · 3 (S) Seat change 265 (C) · 109 (S) 271 (C) · 107 (S) 11 (C) · 3 (S)   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Leader Francisco Romero Robledo Emilio Castelar José López Domínguez Party Liberal Reformist Possibilist Leftist Leader since 1886 1879 1884 Leader's seat Antequera Huesca Coín Last election Did not contest 3 (C) · 2 (S) 36 (C) · 8 (S) Seats won 11 (C) · 4 (S) 11 (C) · 4 (S) 12 (C) · 2 (S) Seat change 11 (C) · 4 (S) 8 (C) · 2 (S) 24 (C) · 6 (S)
Prime Minister before election Práxedes Mateo Sagasta Liberal Prime Minister after election Práxedes Mateo Sagasta Liberal

During this period, an informal system coloquially known as El Turno Pacífico (English: The Peaceful Turn) was operated by the two main parties in the country—the Conservatives and the Liberals—to determine in advance the result of the election, often through the encasillado, caciquism and election rigging, ensuring that both parties would have alternating periods in power. As a result, elections were often neither truly free nor fair, though they could be more competitive in the country's urban centres where this system was weaker.

The election resulted in a large majority for the government-supported candidates of the Liberal Party, which was possible through Antonio Cánovas del Castillo's peaceful handover of power to Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, in what came to be known as the Pact of El Pardo. Running against the pact were the Francisco Romero Robledo and José López Domínguez-led factions within the Conservative and Liberal parties, respectively, but which failed to achieve decisive breakthroughs. The resulting legislature would come to be known as the "Long Parliament" (Spanish: Parlamento Largo): lasting from 1886 to 1891, it would be the only one during the Restoration period to last its full five year-term.

Overview

Electoral system

The Spanish Cortes were envisaged as "co-legislative bodies", based on a nearly perfect bicameral system. 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, and judicial matters, where preeminence was vested in the Senate. Voting for the Cortes was on the basis of censitary suffrage, which comprised national males over 25 years of age fulfilling one of the following criteria: being taxpayers with a minimum quota of 25 Pt per territorial contribution (paid at least one year in advance) or 50 Pt per industrial subsidy (paid at least two years in advance); having a particular position (royal academy numerary members; ecclesiastic individuals; active, unemployed or retired public employees; military personnel; widely recognized painters and sculptors; public teachers; etc.); or having at least a two-year residency in a municipality, provided that an educational or professional capacity could be proven. In Cuba and Puerto Rico, the taxpayer quota requirement was set at 125 Pt for both the territorial contribution and the industrial or trade subsidy; additionally for Cuba, those subject to ineligibility causes were barred from being electors, as well as those who, having been subject to servitude, had not been freed and exempt from patronage for at least three years.

For the Congress of Deputies, 111 seats were elected using a partial block voting system in 31 multi-member constituencies, with the remaining 322 being elected under a one-round first-past-the-post system in single-member districts. Candidates winning a plurality in each constituency were elected. In constituencies electing eight seats, electors could vote for up to six candidates; in those with seven seats, for up to five candidates; in those with six seats, for up to four; in those with four or five seats, for up to three candidates; and for one candidate in single-member districts. Additionally, up to ten deputies could be elected through cumulative voting in several single-member constituencies, provided that they obtained more than 10,000 votes overall. The Congress was entitled to one member per each 50,000 inhabitants, with each multi-member constituency being allocated a fixed number of seats.

As a result of the aforementioned allocation, each Congress multi-member constituency was entitled the following seats:

Seats	Constituencies
8	Havana, Madrid
5	Barcelona, Palma, Santa Clara
4	Santiago de Cuba, Seville
3	Alicante, Almería, Badajoz, Burgos, Cádiz, Cartagena, Córdoba, Granada, Jaén, Jerez de la Frontera, La Coruña, Lugo, Málaga, Matanzas, Murcia, Oviedo, Pamplona, Pinar del Río, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Santander, Tarragona, Valencia, Valladolid, Zaragoza

For the Senate, 180 seats were indirectly elected by the local councils and major taxpayers, with electors voting for delegates instead of senators. Elected delegates—equivalent in number to one-sixth of the councillors in each local council—would then vote for senators using a write-in, two-round majority voting system. The provinces of Álava, Albacete, Ávila, Biscay, Cuenca, Guadalajara, Guipúzcoa, Huelva, Logroño, Matanzas, Palencia, Pinar del Río, Puerto Príncipe, Santa Clara, Santander, Santiago de Cuba, Segovia, Soria, Teruel, Valladolid and Zamora were allocated two seats each, whereas each of the remaining provinces was allocated three seats, for a total of 147. The remaining 33 were allocated to special districts comprising a number of institutions, electing one seat each—the archdioceses of Burgos, Granada, Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Cuba, Seville, Tarragona, Toledo, Valencia, Valladolid and Zaragoza; the Royal Spanish Academy; the other royal academies (History; Fine Arts of San Fernando; Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences; Moral and Political Sciences and Medicine); the universities of Madrid, Barcelona, Granada, Havana, Oviedo, Salamanca, Santiago, Seville, Valencia, Valladolid and Zaragoza; and the economic societies of Friends of the Country from Madrid, Barcelona, Havana–Puerto Rico, León, Seville and Valencia. An additional 180 seats comprised senators in their own right—the monarch's offspring and the heir apparent once coming of age; Grandees of Spain with an annual income of at least 60,000 Pt (from their own real estate or from rights that enjoy the same legal consideration); Captain Generals of the Army and the Navy Admiral; the Patriarch of the Indies and archbishops; and the presidents of the Council of State, the Supreme Court, the Court of Auditors, the Supreme War Council and the Supreme Council of the Navy, after two years of service—as well as senators for life appointed directly by the monarch.

The law provided for by-elections to fill seats vacated in both the Congress and Senate throughout the legislature's term.

Election date

The term of each chamber of the Cortes—the Congress and one-half of the elective part of the Senate—expired five years from the date of their previous election, unless they were dissolved earlier. The previous Congress and Senate elections were held on 27 April and 8 May 1884, which meant that the legislature's terms would have expired on 27 April and 8 May 1889, respectively. The monarch had the prerogative to dissolve both chambers at any given time—either jointly or separately—and call a snap election. There was no constitutional requirement for concurrent elections to the Congress and the Senate, nor for the elective part of the Senate to be renewed in its entirety except in the case that a full dissolution was agreed by the monarch. Still, there was only one case of a separate election (for the Senate in 1877) and no half-Senate elections taking place under the 1876 Constitution.

The Cortes were officially dissolved on 8 March 1886, with the dissolution decree setting the election dates for 4 April (for the Congress) and 25 April 1886 (for the Senate) and scheduling for both chambers to reconvene on 10 May.

Background

The Spanish Constitution of 1876 enshrined Spain as a constitutional monarchy, awarding the monarch the right of legislative initiative together with the bicameral Cortes; the capacity to veto laws passed by the legislative body; the power to appoint senators and government ministers; as well as the title of commander-in-chief of the army and navy. The monarch would play a key role in the system of el turno pacífico (English: the Peaceful Turn) by appointing and dismissing governments and allowing the opposition to take power. Under this informal system, the major political parties at the time, the Conservatives and the Liberals—characterized as elite parties with loose structures dominated by internal factions, each led by powerful individuals—alternated in power by means of election rigging, which they achieved through the encasillado, assignating the seats in the general elections before they were held by using the links between the Ministry of Governance, the provincial civil governors and the local bosses (caciques) to ensure victory and exclude minor parties from the power sharing. The result was "a liberal system without democracy".

The death of King Alfonso XII in November 1885 at the age of 27, with no heir apparent and with her spouse—Maria Christina of Austria—poised to become queen regent under the provisions of the Constitution, had seen a prospective political crisis being averted by the secret signing of the Pact of El Pardo between Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, incumbent prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party, and Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, leader of the Liberal Party. Through the pact, both political parties—which had dominated Spanish politics during the early Restoration period—aimed to temporarily thwart the political fighting within the monarchist camp and provide stability to the regime by definitely establishing the turno system of alternance. As a result, Cánovas peacefully handed over power to Sagasta, who earlier that year had unified the various factions within his party under the "guarantee law": an agreement under which the Liberals would develop the freedoms and rights recognized during the Democratic Sexenium in exchange for the acceptance of shared sovereignty between the King and the Cortes, a basic principle of the 1876 Constitution. Francisco Romero Robledo, who vied for power with Francisco Silvela within the Conservative party, split off in protest to Cánovas' "voluntary relinquishment" of government.

The 1884–1885 period saw some calamities that the Cánovas government had to handle, such as the Alcudia bridge disaster, the 1884 Andalusian earthquake and the 1885 cholera epidemic in Spain. It also saw the Berlin Conference, the starting point of the Scramble for Africa, in which Spain successfully claimed and established the colony of Spanish Sahara. The Carolines Question, a conflict between Spain and the German Empire over the sovereignty of the Caroline Islands and Palau in the western Pacific was resolved through arbitration by the Holy See.

Candidates

For the Congress, Spanish citizens of age and with the legal capacity to vote could run for election, provided that they were not sentenced to perpetual disqualification from political rights or public offices by a final court's decision, or to afflictive penalties if no legal rehabilitation had been obtained at least two years in advance of the election, or to other criminal penalties if the serving of the sentence could not be proven before taking the office of deputy. Other causes of ineligibility were imposed on those physically or morally incapacitated; bankrupt or insolvent persons who had not paid out their debts; and contractors of public works or services; as well as a number of territorial-level officers in government bodies and institutions being barred from running, during their tenure of office, in constituencies within the whole or part of their respective area of jurisdiction.

For the Senate, eligibility was limited to those entitled to be appointed as senators in their own right or those who had belonged to one of the following categories: presidents of the Senate and the Congress of Deputies; deputies who had belonged to at least three different congresses or serving for at least eight terms; government ministers; other Grandees of Spain; Army's lieutenant generals and Navy's vice admirals, two years after their appointment; ambassadors after two years of service and plenipotentiary ministers after four; other members and prosecutors of the Council of State, the Supreme Court, the Court of Auditors, the Supreme War Council and the Supreme Council of the Navy, and the Dean of the Court of Military Orders, after two years of service; presidents and directors of the Royal Spanish Academy and the other royal academies (History; Fine Arts of San Fernando; Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences; Moral and Political Sciences and Medicine); full academics of the aforementioned corporations occupying the first half of the seniority scale in their corps, first-class general inspectors of the corps of Civil Engineers, Mines and Forests, full-time university professors with at least four years of seniority in their category and practice (and provided that those had an annual income of at least 7,500 Pt from their own property, salaries from jobs that cannot be lost except for legally proven cause, or from retirement, withdrawal or termination); as well as those who had an annual income of 20,000 Pt or were taxpayers with a minimum quota of 4,000 Pt in direct contributions at least two years in advance, as long as they were of the Spanish nobility, had been previously deputies, provincial deputies or mayors in provincial capitals or towns over 20,000 inhabitants, as well as those who had ever held the office of senator before the promulgation of the 1876 Constitution.

Results

Congress of Deputies

← Summary of the 4 April 1886 Congress of Deputies election results →

Parties and alliances		Popular vote		Seats
		Votes	%
	Liberal Party (PL)			308
	Liberal Conservative Party (PLC)			71
	Republican Union (UR)			20
	Dynastic Left (ID)			12
	Liberal Reformist Party (PLR)			11
	Possibilist Democratic Party (PDP)			11
	Traditionalist Communion (Carlist) (CT)			1
Total		475,712		434
Votes cast / turnout		475,712	58.94
Abstentions		331,463	41.06
Registered voters		807,175
Sources

Seats PL   70.97% PLC   16.36% UR   4.61% ID   2.76% PLR   2.53% PDP   2.53% CT   0.23%

Senate

← Summary of the 25 April 1886 Senate of Spain election results →

Parties and alliances		Seats
	Liberal Party (PL)	124
	Liberal Conservative Party (PLC)	33
	Liberal Reformist Party (PLR)	4
	Possibilist Democratic Party (PDP)	4
	Republican Union (UR)	3
	Dynastic Left (ID)	2
	Archbishops (ARCH)	10
Total elective seats		180
Sources

Seats PL   68.89% PLC   18.33% PLR   2.22% PDP   2.22% UR   1.67% ID   1.11% ARCH   5.56%

Distribution by group

Summary of political group distribution in the 4th Restoration Cortes (1886–1891)

Group		Parties and alliances		C	S	Total
	PL		Liberal Party (PL)	289	112	432
			Constitutional Union of Cuba (UCC)	12	8
			Unconditional Spanish Party (PIE)	6	2
			Basque Dynastics (Urquijist) (DV)	1	2
	PLC		Liberal Conservative Party (PLC)	64	27	104
			Constitutional Union of Cuba (UCC)	3	5
			Unconditional Spanish Party (PIE)	4	1
	UR		Progressive Republican Party (PRP)	10	1	23
			Autonomist Liberal Party (PLA)	6	1
			Liberal Reformist Party of Puerto Rico (PLRP)	3	1
			Federal Republican Party (PRF)	1	0
	PLR		Liberal Reformist Party (PLR)	9	4	15
			Constitutional Union of Cuba (UCC)	2	0
	PDP		Possibilist Democratic Party (PDP)	11	4	15
	ID		Dynastic Left (ID)	9	2	14
			Unconditional Spanish Party (PIE)	2	0
			Constitutional Union of Cuba (UCC)	1	0
	CT		Traditionalist Communion (Carlist) (CT)	1	0	1
	ARCH		Archbishops (ARCH)	0	10	10
Total				434	180	614

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