ABSTRACT
Introduction After 40 years of authoritarian regime, Spain’s transition towards democracy started in the mid-1970s. By 1977, the first democratic elections since the Civil War (1936-9) were called and a new multi-party system emerged. It was made up of two big statewide parties, the Unión de Centro Democrático (UCD) and the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE); two medium statewide parties, the Partido Comunista de España (PCE) and the Alianza Popular (AP); and several non-statewide parties notably the Catalan Convergència i Unió (CiU2), and the Basque Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV). These six parties reached a consensus on most of Spain’s new institutional setting and the main economic and welfare policies. However, this party system came to an end at the 1982 general elections. After a short interlude, the present national party system emerged by the end of the 1980s. This was composed of two big statewide parties: the PSOE and the Partido Popular (PP), the latter being the result of a merger of the AP with some splits from the former UCD; a medium statewide alliance, Izquierda Unida (IU) which included the PCE and other leftist parties and social movements; and several non-statewide parties among whom the CiU and the PNV were still the most relevant players. Although new statewide parties such as Unión Progreso y Democracia (UPyD) have emerged in the last decade, the party system and the party competition dynamics remain very much the same as in the early 1990s (Oñate 2008). That is why the five major Spanish political parties analysed in this chapter are the PSOE, PP, IU, CDC and the PNV. The data included cover the period from 1974 to 2012. As this chapter illustrates, the selection of party leaders in Spain has not changed substantially since it was first implemented with the restoration of democracy. Formally, leadership selection is essentially made through delegates in party congresses. None of the analysed parties has ever held (open or closed) primaries to select the party leader. Unlike other countries this has not prompted intra-party competition: generally speaking, the incumbent party leaders are rarely challenged, and party contests are still atypical even when the incumbent resigns (Méndez et al. 2004). Furthermore, these procedures have not favoured the promotion of women as party leaders. Party primaries, intra-party contests
and women’s promotion can be found in Spain, but they have mainly occurred in minor or regionalist parties (like UPyD, ERC or ICV), at the regional level, and mostly for the selection of the party’s top candidate.
