1905 Spanish general election

A general election was held in Spain on Sunday, 10 September (for the Congress of Deputies) and on Sunday, 24 September 1905 (for the Senate), to elect the members of the 12th Cortes under the Spanish Constitution of 1876, during the Restoration period. All 404 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as 180 of 360 seats in the Senate.

The informal turno system had allowed the country's two main parties—the Conservatives and the Liberals—to alternate in power by determining in advance the outcome of elections through electoral fraud, often facilitated by the territorial clientelistic networks of local bosses (the caciques). The absence of politically authoritative figureheads since the deaths of Cánovas and Sagasta, together with the national trauma from the Spanish–American War, weakened the internal unity of both parties and allowed faction leaders and local caciques to strengthen their positions as power brokers. Sagasta's death plunged the Liberal Party into turmoil, with an inconclusive leadership contest between Eugenio Montero Ríos and Segismundo Moret seeing the former temporarily splitting (together with supporters of José Canalejas and José López Domínguez) into the Liberal Democratic Party.

Francisco Silvela's second tenure as prime minister of Spain was short-lived, as he resigned in July 1903 over disagreements between the Crown and Antonio Maura over the latter's management of election preparations as Governance minister—which had led to a strong performance by anti-monarchist forces in urban districts in the 1903 election—and amid a growing rivalry with Finance minister Raimundo Fernández-Villaverde, a defender of orthodox economics who opposed Maura's deficit spending. A five-month long cabinet under Villaverde fell after most of the Conservatives coalesced around Maura as new party leader, but a government attempt by the latter collapsed in December 1904, following King Alfonso XIII's interference in the appointment of a new Chief of the Central Staff of the Army. The inability of any other Conservative leader to command the party's majority in parliament thwarted two government attempts by Marcelo Azcárraga and Villaverde (who had split into his own political faction), leading to a new Liberal "turn" under Montero Ríos.