A general election was held in Spain from Thursday, 20 January to Sunday, 23 January 1876 (for the Congress of Deputies) and from Tuesday, 1 February to Friday, 4 February 1876 (for the Senate), to elect the members of the Constituent Restoration Cortes. All 406 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as all 196 seats in the Senate. In the Canary Islands the election was held from 28 to 31 January, and in Puerto Rico it was held from 15 to 18 February.[1] On 5 April 1877, another election to the Senate was held.[2] The election was held under the Turno system.[3]
The Spanish Cortes were envisaged as "co-legislative bodies", based on a nearly perfect bicameral system.[5] Both the Congress of Deputies and the Senate had legislative, control and budgetary functions, sharing equal powers except for laws on contributions, public credit or military force, the first reading of which corresponded to Congress—which also had preeminence in case of disagreement—and impeachment processes against government ministers, in which each chamber had separate powers of indictment (Congress) and trial (Senate).[6][7]
The laws of the Democratic Sexennium remained in force for the 1876 election, including the provisions for both the Congress and Senate within the Spanish Constitution of 1869. As a result, the original electoral law of 1870 was applied, without including the changes introduced by the 1873 amendments.[8][9] Voting for each chamber of the Cortes was on the basis of universal manhood suffrage, which comprised all national males over 25 years of age and in full enjoyment of their civil rights, provided that they were not sentenced—by a final court ruling—to disqualification from political rights, to afflictive penalties not legally rehabilitated; neither being criminally prosecuted with an arrest warrant not substituted with bail; nor homeless.[10][11][12]
The Congress of Deputies was entitled to one member per each 40,000 inhabitants or fraction greater than 20,000. Seats were allocated to single-member districts—424 for the 1876 election—distributed among the provinces of Spain and Puerto Rico in proportion to their populations, and elected using plurality voting.[13][14][15][16]
The law provided for by-elections to fill seats vacated in the Congress throughout the legislature's term.[19] By-elections were not required in the Senate, with vacancies being filled in the next regular election of the chamber.[20]
Election date
The term of each chamber of the Cortes—the Congress and one-quarter of the Senate—expired three years from the date of their previous election, unless they were dissolved earlier.[21] The monarch had the prerogative to dissolve both chambers at any given time—either jointly or separately—and call a snap election.[22] 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.[21]
The Cortes had been officially dissolved since 8 January 1874, following the coup d'état of Pavía.[23] The election decree was issued on 31 December 1875, setting the election dates for between 20 and 23 January 1876 in peninsular Spain, 28 and 31 January in the Canary Islands and 15 and 18 February in Puerto Rico, and scheduling for both chambers to reconvene on 15 February.[8]
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