Spanish general election, 1876

← 1873

20 January–15 February 1876

1879 →

All 391 seats in the Congress of Deputies and all 196 seats in the Senate
196 seats needed for a majority in the Congress of Deputies

Registered

3,604,000–3,989,612

Turnout

2,189,008–2,300,000 (54.9–63.8%)

	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader	Antonio Cánovas del Castillo	Práxedes Mateo Sagasta	Alejandro Mon y Menéndez
Party	Conservative	Constitutional	Moderate
Leader since	1874	1872	Unknown
Leader's seat	Madrid (Madrid)	Zamora (Zamora)	No seat
Last election	3 seats	7 seats	Did not contest
Seats won	317	48	12
Seat change	314	41	12

Prime Minister before election

Antonio Cánovas del Castillo
Conservative

Elected Prime Minister

Antonio Cánovas del Castillo
Conservative

The 1876 Spanish general election was held from Thursday, 20 January to Tuesday, 15 February 1876, to elect the Constituent Restoration Cortes of the Kingdom of Spain. All 391 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as all 196 seats in the Senate.

This was the first election held after the end of the First Spanish Republic in 1874. The newly-founded Liberal Conservative Party (PLC) of Antonio Cánovas del Castillo won an overall majority of seats. The result of the election would pave the way for the adoption of the Spanish Constitution of 1876, marking the starting point of the Bourbon Restoration that would last until 1931.

The Spanish legislature, the Cortes, was composed of two chambers at the time of the 1876 election:

This was a nearly perfect bicameral system, with the two chambers established as "co-legislative bodies". Both chambers had legislative, control and budgetary functions, sharing equal powers except for laws on contributions or public credit, where the Congress had preeminence.

For the 1876 election, the laws of the First Spanish Republic remained in force, 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 changes made by the 1873 amendments.

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Wikipedia