Way back on the second page of this thread, someone posted maps of the first three Spanish elections after the transition to democracy, but they didn’t include margins of victory or write-ups, so I thought I would give it a go myself (partly because I’ve been so impressed by the write-ups by psephologists on and outside of this forum like Nanwe and the people behind AJRElectionMaps). I should be clear Spanish politics isn’t necessarily my area of expertise, so if people want to make corrections, they’re very welcome to.
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The story of the 1977 Spanish election starts with the Spanish transition to democracy, which began with the death of Francisco Franco, the
Caudillo (Head of State) of Spain for the last 39 years, and his succession by Prince Juan Carlos as the first King of Spain since Alfonso XIII abdicated at the start of the Second Republican period. Despite Juan Carlos pledging to continue the principles of corporatist fascism of the
National Movement (
Movimiento Nacional, MN) that Franco had led, it quickly became clear this was untenable given the intense tensions in Spanish society and the advocacy of liberal capitalists both inside and outside of Spain. Juan Carlos knew this, and consequently started to plan to push reforms through the
Cortes Españolas (meaning Spanish Courts, the 'parliament' that formed the legislature of Francoist Spain).
Despite this, Juan Carlos left in place the incumbent head of government, Carlos Arias Navarro. This was anything but conductive to his aims, as Arias Navarro was a hardline opponent of liberalisation and wanted his government to continue Francoism through
democracia a la española (‘democracy in the Spanish way’- comparisons to ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ are fairly apt). Despite this, the government adopted the reform programme that Second Deputy Prime Minister (and future founder of the People’s Party) Manuel Fraga proposed, which sought to reform the Francoist Fundamental Laws of the Realm to create a liberal democracy in Spain. To try to satisfy both the far-right
búnker and the democratic opponents of Francoism, it was decided the reform process would legalise opposition political parties, with one predictable exception (the
Communists, or
Partido Comunista de España, PCE) and would leave the parties outside the MN out of the reform process.
The reform process passed one part on the 25th May 1976, which legalized public demonstrations, but on the 11th June it fell apart after the Cortes added a wrecking amendment to the Criminal Code reform banning organisations that ‘submitted to an international discipline’ and ‘advocated for the implantation of a totalitarian regime’ (just so long as it wasn’t the party that Franco fellow had created). This was the last straw for Juan Carlos and the reformers, and Arias Navarro was dismissed.
His replacement was Adolfo Suárez, who had made a speech in support of the Law of Political Associations asserting that ‘if Spain is plural, the Cortes cannot afford to deny it’. This passionate advocacy for Spanish democracy was a key part of why Juan Carlos picked him, even though Suárez’s Francoist past made him no ally of the left or centre. Regardless, Suárez managed to unite the Cortes and get the Law for Political Reform (
Ley para la Reforma Política) passed, before holding a referendum in which 94% of voters supported it. He also built bridges with the opposition slowly, issuing a political amnesty that freed 400 prisoners, replacing the
Tribunal de Orden Público with the
Audencia Nacional (greatly undercutting the Francoist secret police) and, in March and April 1977, granting the rights to strike and unionise. Finally, and most relevant to our purposes, he also introduced the
Ley Electoral, which created the framework for the modern Spanish electoral system that largely remains in place to this day.
Suárez also achieved positive relations with Felipe González, the secretary general of the
Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (
Partido Socialista Obrero Español, PSOE), the main socialist party in Spain. The PSOE quickly started to moderate its politics as the transition went on, with González visiting Juan Carlos and the party declaring its support for a Cortes election. More troublesome was trying to iron things out with the PCE, both with military leaders (who opposed legalising it) and the organization itself (which was hostile to the Law for Political Reform for its exclusion of the opposition); however, when Suárez met with PCE secretary general Santiago Carrillo in February 1977, he found Carrillo was willing to cooperate without prior demands, and so in April, the PCE was finally legalised. Juan Carlos' cooperative relationship with the leftist parties was also key in his ability to remain monarch despite the Spanish left's traditional republicanism.
It might sound like this transition was going very peacefully, but sadly insurgency was still ongoing outside of the Cortes; the far-left
First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Groups (
Grupos de Resistencia Antifascista Primero de Octubre, GRAPO
) kidnapped Traditionalist politician Antonio María Oriol Urquijo in December 1976, and more infamously and brutally, neo-fascist extremists murdered five PCE and labour activists on Atocha Street in Madrid in January 1977, in what has become known as the Atocha Massacre. Ironically, despite the murderers’ intent of sparking a violent left-wing response to legitimize a Francoist coup d’état, this attack instead massively undermined the far-right and instilled sympathy for the PCE to the point that it could be legalised.
With the election upcoming and the left fairly straightforwardly aligned with its two parties we have already discussed (as well as the
Socialist Unity (
Unidad Socialista, US) alliance that would mostly merge into the PSOE the following year), that leaves the question of what the Spanish right did. The two biggest groupings were led by Manuel Fraga and, of course, Suárez. Fraga formed the more right-wing
People’s Alliance (
Alianza Popular, AP), which ironically despite his initial reformist and current mainstream conservative leanings was a post-Francoist party, seen by many as a middle-ground between the right and the far-right.
Meanwhile, Suárez took a much broader and more centrist track. The party he created, the
Union of the Democratic Centre (
Union de Centro Democratico, UCD), was formed in May 1977 and started out as an electoral alliance of no less than fifteen smaller parties, including Christian democrats, social democrats, liberals and regional parties. It fought the 1977 election as such, but since I can’t really find a distinction between who ran where and they merged into one party in August anyway, I’ve just counted them as one party.
And of course, it wouldn’t be Spain without the regional parties- the
Basque Nationalist Party (
Partido Nacionalista Vasco, PNV in Spanish and
Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea, EAJ in Basque), a big tent Basque nationalist party, took the majority of votes in Biscay and Gipuzkoa, and the latter elected one member from the
Basque Country Left (
Euskadiko Ezkerra, EE), a Marxist Basque nationalist party. The climate in Catalonia was a bit messier, with the biggest Catalan nationalist party being the liberal
Democratic Pact for Catalonia (or
Pacte Democràtic per Catalunya, PDC in Catalan), which won the most votes in Gerona and Lleida (or Lérida as it was known at the time), though the
Union of the Centre and Christian Democracy of Catalonia, the Catalan wing of the
Christian Democratic Team of the Spanish State (
Equipo Demócrata Cristiano del Estado Español, EDCEE), and the socialist
Left of Catalonia-Electoral Democratic Front (
Esquerra de Catalunya–Front Electoral Democràtic, EC-FED in Catalan), both took seats in Barcelona. Finally, the
Centre Independent Aragonese Candidacy (
Candidatura Aragonesa Independiente de Centro, CAIC) took one seat in Aragon (of Catherine fame).
When the results came in, it was clear the UDC would be the largest party, but Suárez fell 11 seats short of an overall majority in the Congress of Deputies. The real success story of the election, however, was the PSOE, which took 118 seats, almost a hundred more than the PCE despite the latter’s status as the main opponents of Franco’s dictatorship, and established itself (and particularly its leader González) as the main opposition to Suárez. It also won the popular vote in the autonomous communities of Andalusia (starting a trend of the large southern region as the party’s heartland, which it has only failed to win pluralities of the vote in in 2011 and 2016), Asturias, Catalonia and Valencia, and came barely 5 points behind the UDC.
Despite this democratic election being a success for Spain, the 1977 election did not mark the end of the transition to democracy. Rather, the so-called Constituent Cortes that was formed by the newly-elected Parliament would continue that process, and with it would continue a sizeable amount of political unrest.