The 1979 election to the
Parlamento Foral (Foral Parliament) of Navarra was held simultaneously with the local elections and the elections to the Juntas Generales of the three Basque provinces. This is the only instance in which the mediaeval administrative unit, the
merindad, was used as an electoral constituency. Since 1982, the Navarrese Parliament has been elected from a single constituency. This is also the only election since 1936 in which a party espousing a Carlist ideology (even if it was Titoist Carlism) obtained a seat at a regional assembly.
Each
merindad was assigned 5 seats regardless of its population, with the remaining seats distributed between
merindad according to their demographic weight until having allocated all 70 seats. The city of Pamplona (Iruña in Basque) was separated from the rest of the
merindad of Pamplona and acted as its own constituency for all purposes. Other than that, it was a typical Spanish election with closed lists, D'Hont quota and 3% threshold.
The Regional government, the Diputación Foral was elected simultaneously: Each constituency was assigned one member of the Diputación, with the exception of Tudela which was given two on account of its larger population (Pamplona was after all split into two constituencies). The party that obtained the most votes in the legislative election in each constituency was automatically given the
merindad's seat in the Diputación. In the case of Tudela, the same procedure applied, but for the two largest parties.
The parties could be divided between Basque nationalists and non-Basque nationalists. And the non-Basque nationalist was further divided between those who favoured a more 'normal' position for Navarra within Spain (PSE-PSOE, UCD) and those who instead advocated for the continuity of its mediaeval privileges, the fueros. (UPN). There was also the left-right axis, although most Basque nationalist groupings were left-wing.
Notes:
Herri Batasuna (HB) was the political arm of ETAm (ETA militar). It only ran its own list in the two Pamplona constituencies. Everywhere else, it ran within the Amaiur coalition.
Amaiur was a coalition of Herri Batasuna, Euskadiko Ezkerra (EE, the political branch of ETApm) and the Basque-nationalist communist EMK party, as well as some local independent groups, like AETE (Estella), Orhi Mendi (Sangüesa) and AEPM (Olite). It was also supported by the PNV-EAJ.
Nacionalistas Vascos (NV) was an electoral coalition that only ran in the two Pamplona constituencies formed by the PNV, Euskadiko Ezkerra and ESEI.
UNAI was an electoral coalition formed by the Maoist party ORT (Revolutionary Labour Organisation), that only ran in the Tudela constituency.
IFN was an independents' list formed by Jesús Ezponda Garaicoechea in the Sangüesa constituency. It has a Basque nationalist,
foralista ideology.