A general election was held in Spain on 22 June 1986 to elect the members of the 3rd under the Spanish Constitution of 1978. All 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as 208 of 254 seats in the Senate. It was held concurrently with a regional election in Andalusia.
The election was held after the referendum on Spanish membership in NATO in March 1986 had resulted in a surprising win for the 'In' camp headed by Prime Minister Felipe González. Reinforced from the referendum result, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) sought to take advantage of the favorable political situation. The election resulted in the PSOE winning a second consecutive—albeit diminished—majority with 184 out of 350 seats. Its immediate competitor, Manuel Fraga's People's Coalition, an electoral alliance formed by People's Alliance (AP), the People's Democratic Party (PDP) and the Liberal Party (PL), remained stagnant with a similar result to the one obtained in 1982 by the AP–PDP alliance. The disappointing election result caused the Coalition to break apart shortly afterwards.
Former PM Adolfo Suárez's Democratic and Social Centre (CDS) came out in third place with nearly 1.9 million votes, 9.2% of the share and 19 seats. The Communist Party of Spain (PCE) contested the election within the newborn left-wing United Left (IU) alliance, slightly improving on the PCE's result in 1982 with 4.6% and 7 seats and holding its own against the Communists' Unity Board (MUC), Santiago Carrillo's split party founded after him being expelled from the PCE, which won no seats.
Two future prime ministers (José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Mariano Rajoy) were first elected as deputies at this election.
Background Shortly after assuming office on 2 December 1982, Prime Minister Felipe González had to face a worsening economic situation, with high inflation, soaring unemployment and a public deficit at 6%. Among the new PSOE government's first economic measures were the nationalization of the Rumasa holding due to its financial situation, alleged fraudulent practices and continuous evasion from the inspection activity conducted by the Bank of Spain, the reduction of working time to 40-hour week, the establishment of a minimum legal annual leave of 30 days and a lunch break of 15 minutes.
This period saw major reforms being implemented in order to achieve economic recovery as well as equalization of Spain with the remainder of Europe, including an unpopular economic stabilization plan involving a process of industrial restructuring (which led to the closure of many obsolete industries) and a reform of the pension system which lengthened the period used to calculate full pension benefits from 10 to 15 years and adopted a new system for pension revaluation. This economic policy received widespread criticism from trade unions—including the historically PSOE-aligned UGT—leading to strikes and demonstrations opposing the government's economic policy. A new labor reform was approved, which included fiscal incentives to investment, added protection for unemployed and the easing of temporality through the implementation of fixed-term contracts. González's first term also saw the establishment of the Spanish National Health System and universal health care in Spain, and decriminalization of abortion in three cases: therapeutic in cases of serious risk to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman, during the first 12 weeks; criminological in cases of woman rape, during the first 22 weeks; and eugenic in cases of fetus malformations, at any time during pregnancy. Free and compulsory education was established until the age of 16.
Internally, these years were marked by a harsh hostile campaign from terrorist group ETA, with around one hundred dead throughout the 1982–1986 period as a result of its activity, which was countered with a similarly harsh government response. The PSOE government also had to deal with the issue of military insurrectionism, with a profound reorganization of the Spanish Armed Forces by promoting an increase of civil authority over the military, with the final aim of professionalizing the Armed Forces and end the threat of military coup attempts. Felipe González also came briefly involved in the 1984 German Flick affair, when SPD MP Peter Struck said in the German press that another MP from his party, Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski, had given one million marks from the corruption plot to González himself. The Spanish prime minister countered this with a remarkable statement at the time: "I have not received a single mark, a single penny, a single peseta, neither from Flick nor from Flock", and was later acquitted from the scandal by the inquiry commission in Congress.
Internationally, the PSOE government was successful in culminating negotiations for the Spanish entry into the European Economic Community (EEC), effective from 1 January 1986. The issue of NATO membership was more controversial, as the PSOE had campaigned for the holding of a referendum on the issue after Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo's move to enter the alliance in May 1982. However, once in power Felipe González evolved to support NATO. According to Santos Juliá, the main factors that influenced the PSOE government's change of attitude were "pressure from the United States and several European countries; the connection between staying in NATO and Spain–EEC negotiations and the growing favorable stance of the Spanish Defence Ministry to attain closer ties with the Alliance". By 1985, as Spain had signed the Act of Accession to the EEC, preparations for the referendum on NATO membership started, being eventually held on 12 March 1986. NATO permanence option won the vote by a surprising 53.1% to 40.3%, and the PSOE came out reinforced.
Within the opposition, the Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD) was dissolved in February 1983. Under Manuel Fraga's leadership, the People's Alliance (AP) and the People's Democratic Party (PDP) joined with other parties to form the People's Coalition, seeking to build on his idea of the "natural majority" of the centre-right in order to win the next general election. At the same time, Catalan politician Miquel Roca tried to enter national politics by founding the Democratic Reformist Party (PRD), supported by the Catalan-based Convergence and Union (CiU), the Liberal Democratic Party (PDL) of Antonio Garrigues Walker and a number of regional parties, in what came to be known as "Operation Roca". All attempts at forming a common alliance between the three main centre to centre-right political forces—including the growing Democratic and Social Centre (CDS) of former prime minister Adolfo Suárez—failed throughout 1985. In the left, the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) experienced an internal crisis which saw the resignation of its leader Santiago Carrillo and his succession by Gerardo Iglesias. Internal disagreements resulted in splits that saw the birth of the Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain (PCPE) and the Workers' Party of Spain–Communist Unity (PTE-UC).
Overview Under the 1978 Constitution, the Spanish were conceived as an imperfect bicameral system.. summarizing . The Congress of Deputies held greater legislative power than the Senate, having the ability to grant or withdraw confidence from a prime minister and to override Senate vetoes by an absolute majority.. Nonetheless, the Senate retained a limited number of specific functions—such as ratifying international treaties, authorizing cooperation agreements between autonomous communities, enforcing direct rule, regulating interterritorial compensation funds, and taking part in constitutional amendments and in the appointment of members to the Constitutional Court and the General Council of the Judiciary—which were not subject to override by Congress..
Date The term of each chamber of the —the Congress and the Senate—expired four years from the date of their previous election, unless they were dissolved earlier.. The election decree was required to be issued no later than 25 days before the scheduled expiration date of parliament and published on the following day in the Official State Gazette (BOE), with election day taking place between 54 and 60 days after the decree's publication.. The previous election was held on 28 October 1982, which meant that the chambers' terms would have expired on 28 October 1986. The election decree was required to be published in the BOE no later than 4 October 1986, setting the latest possible date for election day on 3 December 1986.
The prime minister had the prerogative to propose the monarch to dissolve both chambers at any given time—either jointly or separately—and call a snap election, provided that no motion of no confidence was in process, no state of emergency was in force and that dissolution did not occur before one year after a previous one.. Additionally, both chambers were to be dissolved and a new election called if an investiture process failed to elect a prime minister within a two-month period from the first ballot.. Barring this exception, there was no constitutional requirement for simultaneous elections to the Congress and the Senate. summarizing . Still, as of , there has been no precedent of separate elections taking place under the 1978 Constitution.
While the 1986 general election was initially expected for October, there was widespread opinion that a snap election would be held in June alongside the scheduled 1986 Andalusian regional election, with part of the government remaining ambiguous on the issue. On 21 April, Felipe González announced his intention to trigger an early dissolution of the , explaining that it was his wish to prevent "political uncertainties" resulting from an autumn election that could affect the country's economic prospects during the making of the 1987 General State Budget.
The were officially dissolved on 23 April 1986 with the publication of the corresponding decree in the BOE, setting election day for 22 June and scheduling for both chambers to reconvene on 15 July..
Electoral system Voting for each chamber of the was based on universal suffrage, comprising all Spanish nationals over 18 years of age with full political rights, provided that they had not been deprived of the right to vote by a final sentence, nor were legally incapacitated..
The Congress of Deputies had a minimum of 300 and a maximum of 400 seats, with electoral provisions fixing its size at 350. Of these, 348 were elected in 50 multi-member constituencies corresponding to the provinces of Spain—each of which was assigned an initial minimum of two seats and the remaining 248 distributed in proportion to population—using the D'Hondt method and closed-list proportional voting, with a three percent-threshold of valid votes (including blank ballots) in each constituency. The remaining two seats were allocated to Ceuta and Melilla as single-member districts elected by plurality voting.; . The use of this electoral method resulted in a higher effective threshold depending on district magnitude and vote distribution.
As a result of the aforementioned allocation, each Congress multi-member constituency was entitled the following seats:.
Seats Constituencies 33 Barcelona, Madrid 16 Valencia 12 Seville 10 Alicante, Biscay 9 Asturias, Cádiz, La Coruña, Málaga 8 Murcia, Pontevedra, Zaragoza 7 Córdoba, Granada, Guipúzcoa, Las Palmas 6 Badajoz, Balearics, Jaén, Santa Cruz de Tenerife 5 Almería, Cáceres, Cantabria, Castellón, Ciudad Real, Gerona, Huelva, León, Lugo, Navarre, Orense, Tarragona, Toledo, Valladolid 4 Álava, Albacete, Burgos, La Rioja, Lérida, Salamanca, Zamora 3 Ávila, Cuenca, Guadalajara, Huesca, Palencia, Segovia, Soria, Teruel