Spanish Senate
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The Spanish Senate (Senado de España in Spanish) is the upper house of Spain's parliament, the Cortes Generales.
It has 259 members, 208 of whom are directly elected by popular vote, with the other 51 being appointed by the regional legislatures. All senators serve four-year terms.
The last election was held on 14 March 2004. The results were as follows (regional legislatures-appointed members are counted separately):
| PP | PSOE | ECP | PNV | CiU | CC | Other | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Outgoing | 127 + 24 151 |
53 + 14 67 |
8 + 4 12 |
6 + 1 7 |
8 + 2 10 |
5 + 1 6 |
1 + 5 6 |
208 + 51 259 |
| Incoming | 102 + 24 126 |
79 + 15 94 |
12 + 4 16 |
6 + 1 7 |
4 + 2 6 |
5 + 1 6 |
0 + 4 4 |
208 + 51 259 |
| Change | -25 | +27 | +4 | 0 | -4 | 0 | -2 | 0 |
(Absolute majority is 130 seats)
| Parties and alliances | Seats |
|---|---|
| Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español) | 81 |
Entesa Catalana de Progrés
|
12 |
| People's Party (Partido Popular) | 102 |
Convergence and Unity (Convergència i Unió)
|
4 |
| Basque Nationalist Party (Partido Nacionalista Vasco/Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea) | 4 |
| Canarian Coalition (Coalición Canaria) | 3 |
| Members appointed by the regional legislatures | 51 |
| Total (turnout %) | 259 |
| Source: El País Online | |
[edit] Elections to the Senate
In Spain, elections to the upper house have always been held at the same time as elections to the lower. Nevertheless, it is actually possible to hold them separately if the President of the Government decides to call elections only for one of the chambers (according to article 115 of Spanish Constitution). The method is completely different for each house. While the Congress of Deputies uses the simple D'Hondt method of party list proportional representation to allocate seats in each constituency, with each constituency's seats determined by its population, the Senate members are selected in 2 different ways: election by partial bloc voting and appointment from regional legislatures.
[edit] Directly elected members
The majority of the members of the Senate (actually 208 out of 259) are directly elected by the people. Each province (except insular ones) forms a constituency and is granted 4 senators (population doesn't count here, so the province of Madrid, roughly 6 million people, is very underrepresented compared to Soria's 100,000 inhabitants). Insular provinces are treated specially, and each big island (or group of small islands) is granted a number of senators between 1 and 3 as follows. The larger islands of the Balearics (Baleares) and Canaries (Canarias) - Mallorca, Gran Canaria, and Tenerife - are assigned three seats each, and the smaller islands - Menorca, Ibiza-Formentera, Fuerteventura, Gomera, Hierro, Lanzarote and La Palma - one each; Ceuta and Melilla are assigned two seats each
In the elections to the Senate (opposed to the elections to the Congress of Deputies), each party nominates 3 candidates (fewer in island constituencies). Then, all candidates are printed (sorted by party) on a single (very big, usually DIN A3 or bigger) sheet of ochre (sepia) color, called a bedsheet (Spanish sábana). Within a party the names are sorted by surname. This has the silly but perverse effect that candidates with a surname earlier in the alphabetic order usually receive more votes than their later comrades.
Each voter can cast up to 3 votes (fewer in island constituencies) by crossing the empty square at the left of the candidate selected from any party. If more than 3 votes are cast, all votes are null, but if fewer than 3 votes are cast, the remaining votes are counted as blank votes. This is the only case in Spanish democracy where voters vote for individuals rather than a party list. As part of their propaganda efforts, parties usually mail voters pre-marked sheets before the election. The 4 top candidates are elected as senators. Although they are not required to do so, voters usually cast all their three votes for candidates from the same party. As a result, usually 3 senators from the most popular party are appointed, and 1 senator for the second party; sometimes a 2-2 result is obtained.
[edit] Regional legislatures-appointed members
The legislatures of the autonomous communities can appoint senators from their own ranks. Each legislature can appoint up to population/1000000 (rounded) senators, that is, approximately 1 senator per million of people. Currently, regional legislatures appoint 51 senators, even though the Spanish population is 42 million, because of rounding issues (Madrid's population is 5.6 million, but it elects 6 senators).
Usually, the legislature-appointed members reflect the scaled composition of the regional legislatures, but there isn't a legal requirement.
[edit] Role
The Spanish parliamentary system is an asymmetric bicameral one, thus meaning that the Congress of Deputies has more functions by itself and can also override nearly all the votes in the Senate. The Congress is the only of the two chambers which can grant confidence to a prime minister. It can override all Senate votes by an absolute majority. The Senate has reserved functions in the appointment of constitutional posts, such as judges of the Constitutional Tribunal or the Members of the Judicial Power. The Senate holds sole responsibility on forcing a regional president to fulfil his functions, as established in article 155 of the Spanish Constitution. This has never occurred, as of 2007.
Since early in the Spanish democracy, there have been talks of reforming the Senate. One of the studied proposals is making the Senate a chamber representing the autonomous communities of Spain, thus advancing in the federalization of Spain.
[edit] External links
- Official Senate web page (Spanish)
