__NOTOC__ The Spanish Senate (Spanish: Senado) is the upper house of the Cortes Generales, Spain's legislative branch.

It has 259 members: 208 are directly elected by popular vote and the other 51 are appointed by the regional legislatures. All senators serve four-year terms.

The last election was held on 14 March 2004. The results were as follows (regional legislatures-appointed members are counted separately):

(Absolute majority is 130 seats)

Elections to the Senate

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In Spain, elections to the upper house are held at the same time as elections to the lower, but the method is completely different. While the Congress of Deputies uses the simple D'Hondt method of party list proportional representation to allocate seats in each constituency, with each constituency's seats determined by its population, the Senate members are selected in 2 different ways: election by partial bloc voting and appointment from regional legislatures.

Directly elected members

The majority of the members of the Senate (actually 208 out of 259) are directly elected by the people. Each province (except insular ones) forms a constituency and is granted 4 senators (population doesn't count here, so the province of Madrid, roughly 6 million people, is very underrepresented compared to Soria's 100,000 inhabitants). Insular provinces are treated specially, and each big island (or group of small islands) is granted a number of senators between 1 and 3 as follows. The larger islands of the Balearics (Baleares) and Canaries (Canarias) - Mallorca, Gran Canaria, and Tenerife - are assigned three seats each, and the smaller islands - Menorca, Ibiza-Formentera, Fuerteventura, Gomera, Hierro, Lanzarote and La Palma - one each; Ceuta and Melilla are assigned two seats each

In the elections to the Senate (opposed to the elections to the Congress of Deputies), each party nominates 3 candidates (fewer in island constituencies). Then, all candidates are printed (sorted by party) on a single (very big, usually DIN A3 or bigger) sheet of ochre (sepia) color, called a bedsheet (Spanish sábana). Within a party the names are sorted by surname. This has the silly but perverse effect that candidates with a surname earlier in the alphabetic order usually receive more votes than their later comrades.

Each voter can cast up to 3 votes (fewer in island constituencies) by crossing the empty square at the left of the candidate selected from any party. If more than 3 votes are cast, all votes are null, but if fewer than 3 votes are cast, the remaining votes are counted as blank votes. This is the only case in Spanish democracy where voters vote for individuals rather than a party list. As part of their propaganda efforts, parties usually mail voters pre-marked sheets before the election. The 4 top candidates are elected as senators. Although they are not required to do so, voters usually cast all their three votes for candidates from the same party. As a result, usually 3 senators from the most popular party are appointed, and 1 senator for the second party; sometimes a 2-2 result is obtained.

Regional legislatures-appointed members

The legislatures of the autonomous communities can appoint senators from their own ranks. Each legislature can appoint up to population/1000000 (rounded) senators, that is, approximately 1 senator per million of people. Currently, regional legislatures appoint 51 senators, even though the Spanish population is 42 million, because of rounding issues (Madrid's population is 5.6 million, but it elects 6 senators).

Usually, the legislature-appointed members reflect the scaled composition of the regional legislatures, but there isn't a legal requirement.

Role

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The Spanish parliamentary system is an asymmetric bicameral one, thus meaning that the Congress of Deputies has more functions by itself and can also override nearly all the votes in the Senate. The Congress is the only of the two chambers which can grant confidence to a prime minister. It can override all Senate votes by an absolute majority. The Senate has reserved functions in the appointment of constitutional posts, such as judges of the Constitutional Tribunal or the Members of the Judicial Power. The Senate holds sole responsibility on forcing a regional president to fulfil his functions, as established in article 155 of the Spanish Constitution. This has never occurred, as of 2005.

Since early in the Spanish democracy, there have been talks of reforming the Senate. One of the studied proposals is making the Senate a chamber representing the autonomous communities of Spain, thus advancing in the federalization of Spain.

External links

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• Official Senate web page (Spanish)

Government of Spain | National legislatures | National upper houses | Politics of Spain

Senáu d'España | Senado de España | Espainiako Senatua | Senado de España