A general election was held in Spain from 20 to 23 January 1876 to elect the members of the Constituent in the Restoration period. 406 of 424 seats in the Congress of Deputies and all 200 seats in the Senate were up for election. In the Canary Islands the election was held from 28 to 31 January, in Puerto Rico it was held from 15 to 18 February, and in Cuba it was indefinitely postponed. On 5 April 1877, another election to the Senate was held.
The electorate consisted of 3,989,612 electors, about 24.0% of the country population.
This was the first election to be held after the end of the First Spanish Republic in 1874. The Third Carlist War and the Ten Years' War were still unraveling at the time, meaning that elections were not held in some districts (namely, those in the Captaincy General of Cuba). The newly founded Liberal Conservative Party of incumbent prime minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo won an overall majority of seats, paving the way for the adoption of the Spanish Constitution of 1876, which would mark the starting point of the Bourbon Restoration that would last until 1931.
The pronunciamientoâÂÂa military coupâÂÂof Arsenio MartÃÂnez Campos on 29 December 1874 put an end to the First Spanish Republic and hastened the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy around the figure of Prince Alfonso de Borbón, son of former Queen Isabella II. An interim government led by Cánovas del Castillo was confirmed by King Alfonso XII upon disembarking in Barcelona on 9 January 1875.
Under the Sandhurst Manifesto, the Spanish were conceived as a provisional assembly tasked with drafting a new constitution that would re-establish the monarchy around Prince Alfonso de Borbón. The electoral law of the Democratic Sexennium remained in force, including the provisions for both the Congress of Deputies and the Senate under the 1869 Constitution, but excluding the 1873 amendments.
Voting for each chamber of the was based on universal manhood suffrage, comprising all Spanish national males over 25 years of age with full civil rights. In Puerto Rico, voting was based on censitary suffrage, comprising males of legal age who were either literate or taxpayers with a minimum quota of 16 escudos. Additional restrictions excluded those deprived of political rights or disqualification from public office by a final court ruling, under criminal penalties or prosecution without bail, and homeless.
The Congress of Deputies had one seat per 40,000 inhabitants or fraction above 20,000. All were elected in single-member districts using plurality voting and distributed among the provinces of Spain and Puerto Rico according to population. 18 additional seats were allocated to three multi-member constituencies in the island of Cuba, where elections and boundary delimitations were indefinitely postponed due to the Ten Years' War.
All 200 Senate seats were elected using indirect, write-in, two-round majority voting. Delegates chosen by local councilsâÂÂtogether with provincial deputiesâÂÂvoted for senators. Provinces and the whole of Puerto Rico were allocated four seats each.
For the Congress, the law provided for by-elections to fill vacant seats during the legislative term. For the Senate, any vacancies arising during the legislative term were filled in the chamber's next full or one-quarter election, with senators elected this way serving the remainder of their seat's original term.
For the Congress, Spanish citizens with the right to vote could run for election, provided that they were not holders of government-appointed posts. Special exemptions from ineligibility were granted to certain individuals, capping at 40 the number of deputies able to benefit from these:
For the Senate, eligibility was limited to Spanish citizens over 40 years of age and in full enjoyment of their civil rights, provided that they belonged (or had belonged) to certain categories:
Other ineligibility provisions also applied to a number of territorial officials within their areas of jurisdiction, during their term of office and for up to three months afterwards; contractors of public works or services; tax collectors and their guarantors; and debtors of public funds. Additionally in Puerto Rico, ineligibility extended to those convicted of slave trade crimes. Incompatibility rules prohibited the simultaneous holding of the positions of deputy, senator, provincial deputy and local councillor, as well as serving by two or more constituencies.
The term of each chamber of the âÂÂthe Congress and one-quarter of the SenateâÂÂexpired three years from the date of their previous election, unless they were dissolved earlier. Election day was held over several voting days: the first was used to elect polling station officials, and the remaining ones were devoted to the parliamentary election itself.
The monarch had the prerogative to dissolve both chambers at any given timeâÂÂeither jointly or separatelyâÂÂand call a snap election. Only elections to renew one-quarter of the Senate were constitutionally required to be held concurrently with elections to the Congress, though the former could be renewed in its entirety in the case that a full dissolution was agreed by the monarch.
The had been officially dissolved since 8 January 1874, following the coup d'état of PavÃÂa. The election decree was issued on 31 December 1875, setting election day to start on 20 January 1876 in peninsular Spain, on 28 January in the Canary Islands, and on 15 February in Puerto Rico, and scheduling for both chambers to reconvene on 15 February.
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