The November 2013 Spanish general election was held on the 3rd November 2013 to elect the 400 members of the Cortes, the unicameral legislature of Spain. Acting Prime Minister Carme Chacón of the PSOE was seeking election to a second term, as she had in May.
The election saw the end of the shortest-serving Cortes in Spanish history, since the Cortes elected in May had had a parliamentary arithmetic hostile to the formation of a government led by either the centre-left PSOE or the centre-right PPR. The Opposition leader Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría had been expected to stand down after her party’s losses in the election, but she stayed on due to the continuing instability and problems with forming a new government.
Simultaneously, Chacón had damaged her reputation by seeking to form a government with the support of IP, a left-wing party which formed the third-largest grouping in the Cortes, and ER/IR, a left-wing nationalist party that supported Basque, Catalan and Galician independence. Together the parties were one of the only realistic combinations that could form a majority government, but IR leader Joan Puigcercós saw Chacón as too hostile to the independence movements. There was also dissent against allying with the more leftist parties within the PSOE led by Andalusian regional politician and executive member Susana Díaz.
When the vote to swear in a second Chacón government was held on the 25th September 2013, only 170 of the 400 Deputies voted to confirm it (121 from the PSOE and 49 from IP), 31 short of a majority. The day after this defeat, President Fernández de la Vega announced the Cortes would be dissolved after serving for just four months, with the new election set for just over a month later.
The polls saw a significant decline for the parties which had sought to form a new government, while the PPR began to bolster its position in the polls as Sáenz de Santamaría bemoaned the ‘incompetence’ of the left-wing parties and called for ‘a government of unity’ (the word 'unity' was a very deliberate choice to imply opposition to the independence movements), strengthening this attitude with her improvement of relations with UPyD and its leader Rosa Díez. UPyD had further surged in support since the May election thanks to the close association the new government had forged with IR and how this had stoked fears of independence movements achieving their intended goals, and Díez pledged that it would be a ‘moderating presence’ on a PPR-led government.
When the election was held, turnout fell significantly from May to just 70.7%. The PPR regained its status as the largest party in the Cortes while the PSOE dropped to its worst showing since 1977. Ironically, IP held up better than the polls had expected and remained the third-largest party, even beating out IR to a plurality in Álava. A vote of confidence held on the 21st November saw Sáenz de Santamaría successfully form a government with the support of UPyD.