1886 Spanish general election
4 April 1886 (Congress)
25 April 1886 (Senate) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
All 434 seats in the Congress of Deputies and 180 (of 360) seats in the Senate 218 seats needed for a majority in the Congress of Deputies | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Registered | 807,175 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Turnout | 475,712 (58.9%) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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A general election was held in Spain on Sunday, 4 April (for the Congress of Deputies) and on Sunday, 25 April 1886 (for the Senate), to elect the members of the 4th Cortes under the Spanish Constitution of 1876, during the Restoration period. All 434 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as 180 of 360 seats in the Senate. The electorate comprised about 4.6% of the country's population.
During this period, an informal system known as turno or turnismo was operated by the country's two main parties—the Conservatives and the Liberals—to determine in advance the outcome of elections by means of electoral fraud, often achieved through the territorial clientelistic networks of local bosses (the caciques), ensuring that both parties would have rotating periods in power. As a result, elections were often neither truly free nor fair, though they could be more competitive in the country's urban centres where caciquism was weaker.
The election resulted in a large majority for the government-supported candidates of the Liberal Party, which was possible through Antonio Cánovas del Castillo's peaceful handover of power to Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, in what came to be known as the Pact of El Pardo. Running against the pact were the Francisco Romero Robledo and José López Domínguez-led factions within the Conservative and Liberal parties, respectively, but which failed to achieve decisive breakthroughs. The resulting legislature would come to be known as the "Long Parliament" (Spanish: Parlamento Largo): lasting from 1886 to 1891, it would be the only one during the Restoration period to last its full five year-term.