The 1957 Spanish election was held on the 27th January 1957, to elect the 473 members of the Congress of Deputies. It is often considered a realigning election since it was the first to be held after what historians consider the beginning of the Spanish miracle (Spanish:
El Milagro español), and because of the significant upheaval seen among the opposition.
Since the 1953 election, the Spanish economy had started to boom thanks to a combination of state-sponsored economic investment and industrialisation, the retention of a solid welfare state that had been established under the Giral government, the growth of purchasing power among Spanish workers, and growing international trade with Europe and the rest of the West. As the Prime Minister of the time, Recasens was able to claim considerable credit for this and enjoyed considerable popularity.
Notably, Spain’s economic growth was more tied into globalisation than other countries enjoying similar booms; Recasens had eagerly supported, and ensured Spain joined, the Treaty of Paris and thus the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951-52, and tourism was rapidly becoming a growing industry, building up strong economic relations between Spain and the UK in the absence of a common market between the two.
Recasens dissolved the Congress in December 1956 in advance of his plans to sign the Treaty of Rome in March 1957, and sought a new election to secure a mandate for this decision. In a prominent address he gave on New Year’s Day 1957, he commended ‘hardworking Spaniards’ and the workers of the
Instituto Nacional de Industria (INI, National Institute of Industry) for their role in ensuring Spain’s meteoric economic development. In particular, he commended how the INI had been transformed by his and Giral’s governments from a tool of the Sanjurjoist regime into a nationalised industrial development corporation, and noted how its chairman, Juan Antonio Suanzes, was a former nationalist who had renounced the old regime and embraced ‘the good of the Republic’.
This speech helped the ruling PRR, which Recasens led, to gain momentum, is considered an integral statement of his political attitudes at the time, and made it far more likely the government would retain the absolute majority it had secured in 1953. For some time, despite the popularity of Recasens, this had been in doubt due to a strong campaign by the socialist PSOE. Its leader, Luis Jiménez de Asúa, was seen as an underdog due to his party’s status as the third-largest in the Congress, but popular concern about income inequality and the weakness of the Leader of the Opposition, Carlos Esplá of the IR, ironically allowed the PSOE to gain traction. Jiménez de Asúa’s moderate ideology also helped re-establish the PSOE as a potential party of government and distanced it from the failures of the Popular Front and the 1953 Uprising without alienating the leftists who were still favorable to such movements' aims.
As was widely expected, Recasens won a second, though somewhat reduced, majority of 243 out of 473 seats in the Congress, while the PSOE secured by far its best result since the Civil Wars, actually surpassing the totals the IR had attained in 1950 and 1953. The other parties generally performed poorly, especially the IR, which fell from the second-largest party to the third and has never regained its leadership status either as a government or opposition.
