Four days. This Sunday the polling stations open so that the Canaries, together with the rest of the Spanish, choose the new ‘body’ of the Congress of Deputies and the Senate, the two chambers that make up the Cortes Generales. And, facing this new appointment with the polls, it never hurts to remember how each of them is voted for and that for the territorial election, along with the ballot and the envelope, an important actor comes into play: the pen.
by colors
The citizens will face two ballot boxes, two envelopes and several ballots on 23-J. One of the envelopes, the white one, will be used to choose the 350 deputies that will make up the Lower House, and who will elect the new Prime Minister. Of these, 15 will be decided by Canarian voters. Eight seats in the hemicycle will be determined from the islands of the province of Las Palmas and seven from those of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
The other envelope, the sepia one, will serve for the election of the senators that will make up the Senate. The number of senators is not fixed, contrary to what happens in Congress. The next legislature will have a total of 265 seats, but the Spanish by direct vote will only elect 208.
For the election of this Chamber, the electoral law establishes that each island acts as a constituency, so that Gran Canaria has three seats and Tenerife another three. Fuerteventura, La Gomera, El Hierro, Lanzarote –together with La Graciosa– and La Palma each have one seat. The voters of the capital islands will only be able to choose two of the three candidates that determines the law.
Mark favorite
When choosing the candidates for the Upper House, make sure to mark the corresponding number of senators per island, if the voter marks more it will be null. And it is that in the Senate the person, the specific candidate, is voted from among those who appear on the single ballot that the voters will find in the booths of the colleges. In this way, people from Gran Canaria and Tenerife will have the possibility of checking a maximum of two boxes, and voters from those outside the capital must check a single box. This system allows voters from the capital islands to choose candidates from different political forces. Those who reach the highest number of votes in their constituency will obtain a seat in the Senate.
Two in the capitals
In these elections marked by the summer heat, the people of Gran Canaria will be able to choose between 19 candidates for senator and the people of Tenerife between 18. The normal thing is that each candidacy presents two senators, which is the maximum that can be chosen in a constituency that determines three seats in the chamber, in order to concentrate the vote. For example, in 2019 in Gran Canaria, as in Tenerife, the PSOE won two seats and the PP one. However, there are forces like Sumar that have three candidates on 23-J, an issue that can play a trick on their candidates by dividing the options as much as possible, who can only check two boxes, and others like Vox in Gran Canaria or Cuts Zero in Tenerife only carry one, a strategy that could help them to scratch a seat by concentrating the vote as much as possible.
In the rest of the islands, the rabbits and gracioseros will have to select their representative among seven names, just like the herreños and gomeros. Meanwhile, majoreros and palmeros must mark one of the nine candidates that their constituencies have.
previously
In the previous elections, as happened in the capital, the rest of the islands also dyed the Senate red. The Socialists took control of the position in the Chamber of Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, El Hierro and two of Tenerife and Gran Canaria; the popular ones saved the La Palma seat and got one in Gran Canaria and another in Tenerife; and the Gomera Socialist Association (ASG) stayed with the Gomeran senator. Thus, the PSOE reached seven seats of the eleven that the Canary Islands distribute, the PP three and those of Casimiro Curbelo one.
by designation
Of the 265 senators, the 57 who are not chosen by “universal, free, equal, direct and secret suffrage” are appointed by the regional parliaments. How are they distributed? One per community and one more for every million inhabitants registered in the territory. Therefore, in the Canary Islands, the eleven elected are joined by three appointed by Parliament. These must be members of the autonomous chamber and upon accepting the position in Madrid they must resign from their regional seat. The rule also dictates that representation must be proportional to the deputies of each parliamentary group.
The number of senators appointed by the autonomies fluctuates according to demographic changes. In the last legislature there were 57, but in the three that passed between 2011 and 2019 there were 58 representatives. The Canary Islands have had three regional senators since 2008, the year in which the ninth legislature began, but previously, they only had two.
This is a different system from Congress, in which political parties present their candidacies on closed and blocked sheets. In this way, on Sunday the voters of the Canary Islands, when voting for the lower house, will not be able to select individual candidates or alter the order of the lists, they will only have to choose the ballot of the party they prefer and insert it in the corresponding envelope. The formations that in the recount have not obtained at least 3% of the valid votes cast in the constituency, will not participate in the distribution of seats.
Other constituencies
In mainland Spain, where the constituency is the province, each one must elect four senators. On the other hand, the senators for the Canary Islands come from insular circumscriptions, such as those of the Balearic Islands. In the same way as Gran Canaria and Tenerife, Mallorca elects three representatives. The rest of the islands of the Mediterranean archipelago choose two senators, as one corresponds to Menorca and the other to the Ibiza-Formentera group.
As already happens in the Congress of Deputies, there are two more constituencies that are given by the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla. Each one corresponds to two representatives in the territorial Chamber, which represents the autonomous communities and cities.
