Spanish local elections, 2003

Spanish local elections, 2003

← 1999 25 May 2003 2007 →
65,510 councillors in 8,108 municipal councils 1,036 seats in 38 provincial deputations
Registered	34,386,462 2.4%
Turnout	23,270,072 (67.7%) 3.7 pp
First party Second party Third party   Leader José María Aznar José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero Artur Mas Party PP PSOE CiU Leader since 4 September 1989 22 July 2000 7 January 2002 Last election 24,623 seats, 34.4% 21,917 seats, 34.3% 4,089 seats, 3.6% Seats won 23,615 23,224 3,687 Seat change 1,008 1,307 402 Popular vote 7,875,762 7,999,178 789,871 Percentage 34.3% 34.8% 3.4% Swing 0.1 pp 0.5 pp 0.2 pp   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Leader Gaspar Llamazares Jordi Carbonell José Ángel Biel Party IU ERC PAR Leader since 29 October 2000 1996 2000 Last election 2,295 seats, 6.5% 677 seats, 1.1% 925 seats, 0.4% Seats won 2,198 1,282 907 Seat change 97 605 18 Popular vote 1,394,871 419,961 85,857 Percentage 6.1% 1.8% 0.4% Swing 0.4 pp 0.7 pp 0.0 pp

The 2003 Spanish local elections were held on Sunday, 25 May 2003, to elect all 65,510 councillors in the 8,108 municipalities of Spain and all 1,036 seats in 38 provincial deputations. The elections were held simultaneously with regional elections in thirteen autonomous communities, as well as local elections in the three foral deputations of the Basque Country and the ten island councils in the Balearic and Canary Islands.

Municipalities in Spain were local corporations with independent legal personality. They had a governing body, the municipal council or corporation, composed of a mayor, deputy mayors and a plenary assembly of councillors. Voting for the local assemblies was on the basis of universal suffrage, with all nationals over eighteen, registered in the corresponding municipality and in full enjoyment of all political rights entitled to vote. The mayor was in turn elected by the plenary assembly, with a legal clause providing for the candidate of the most-voted party to be automatically elected to the post in the event no other candidate was to gather an absolute majority of votes.

Local councillors were elected using the D'Hondt method and a closed list proportional representation, with a threshold of 5 percent of valid votes—which included blank ballots—being applied in each local council. Parties not reaching the threshold were not taken into consideration for seat distribution. Councillors were allocated to municipal councils based on the following scale:

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