The 1995 Barcelona City Council election, also the 1995 Barcelona municipal election, was held on Sunday, 28 May 1995, to elect the 5th

City Council A municipal council is the legislative body of a municipality or local government area. Depending on the location and classification of the municipality it may be known as a city council, town council, town board, community council, rural counc ...

of the

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...

. All 41 seats in the City Council were up for election. The election was held simultaneously with regional elections in thirteen

autonomous communities eu, autonomia erkidegoa ca, comunitat autònoma gl, comunidade autónoma oc, comunautat autonòma an, comunidat autonoma ast, comunidá autónoma , alt_name = , map = , category = Autonomous administra ...

and

local elections In many parts of the world, local elections take place to select office-holders in local government, such as mayors and councillors. Elections to positions within a city or town are often known as "municipal elections". Their form and conduct vary ...

all throughout

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

. The unveiling of numerous corruption scandals throughout 1994 affecting

Felipe González Felipe González Márquez (; born 5 March 1942) is a Spanish lawyer, professor, and politician, who was the Secretary-General of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) from 1974 to 1997, and the 3rd Prime Minister of Spain since the ...

Socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...

government marked the electoral campaign. For the first time in 16 years, a real possibility for change in the local government resulted in a heated race between

Socialists' Party of Catalonia The Socialists' Party of Catalonia ( ca, Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya, PSC–PSOE official acronym) is a social-democratic political party in Catalonia, Spain, resulting from the merger of three parties: the Socialist Party of Catalonia ...

(PSC) candidate and incumbent Mayor

Pasqual Maragall Pasqual Maragall i Mira (; born 13 January 1941) is a Spanish politician and former List of Presidents of Catalonia, President of Generalitat de Catalunya. He had previously been Mayor of Barcelona, from 1982 to 1997, and helped run the city's s ...

and

Convergence and Union Convergence and Union ( ca, Convergència i Unió, CiU; ) was a Catalan nationalist electoral alliance in Catalonia, Spain. It was a federation of two constituent parties, the larger Democratic Convergence of Catalonia (CDC) and its smaller coun ...

(CiU) candidate Miquel Roca. Another factors influencing the political debate were the People's Party (PP) rise in opinion polls as well as

Republican Left of Catalonia The Republican Left of Catalonia ( ca, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, ERC; ; generically branded as ) is a Catalan independence movement, pro-Catalan independence, social democracy, social-democratic List of political parties in Catalonia, p ...

(ERC) recovery. The election resulted in a surprising comfortable win for PSC and Pasqual Maragall, which was elected for a fourth consecutive term in office with 16 seats and 38.4%. On the other hand, CiU suffered from the PP growth and obtained its worst result since

1983 The year 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call. Events January * January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to Internet protocol suite, TCP/IP is officially completed (this is consid ...

, winning 13 seats and 30.6%. The People's Party nearly doubled its 1991 result with 7 seats and 16.6%, while both

Initiative for Catalonia Initiative for Catalonia Greens ( ca, Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds, ICV; ) was an eco-socialist political party in Catalonia. It was formed as a merger of Iniciativa per Catalunya and Els Verds. IC had been an alliance led by Partit Socialis ...

(IC) and ERC improved their electoral performances, with the latter narrowly surpassing the 5% threshold to enter the City Council.

Electoral system

The

City Council of Barcelona The City Council of Barcelona (Catalan: ''Ajuntament de Barcelona''; Spanish: ''Ayuntamiento de Barcelona'') is the top-tier administrative and governing body of the municipality of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. In terms of political structure, ...

( ca, Ajuntament de Barcelona, es, Ayuntamiento de Barcelona) was the top-tier administrative and governing body of the

, composed of the mayor, the government council and the elected plenary assembly. Elections to the local councils in Spain were fixed for the fourth Sunday of May every four years. Voting for the local assembly was on the basis of

universal suffrage Universal suffrage (also called universal franchise, general suffrage, and common suffrage of the common man) gives the right to vote to all adult citizens, regardless of wealth, income, gender, social status, race, ethnicity, or political stanc ...

, which comprised all nationals over 18 years of age, registered in the municipality of Barcelona and in full enjoyment of their political rights, as well as resident non-nationals whose country of origin allowed Spanish nationals to vote in their own elections by virtue of a treaty. Local councillors were elected using the

D'Hondt method The D'Hondt method, also called the Jefferson method or the greatest divisors method, is a method for allocating seats in parliaments among federal states, or in party-list proportional representation systems. It belongs to the class of highest- ...

and a

closed list Closed list describes the variant of party-list systems where voters can effectively only vote for political parties as a whole; thus they have no influence on the party-supplied order in which party candidates are elected. If voters had some inf ...

proportional representation Proportional representation (PR) refers to a type of electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to geographical (e.g. states, regions) and political divis ...

, with an

electoral threshold The electoral threshold, or election threshold, is the minimum share of the primary vote that a candidate or political party requires to achieve before they become entitled to representation or additional seats in a legislature. This limit can ...

of five percent of valid votes—which included blank ballots—being applied in each local council. Councillors were allocated to municipal councils based on the following scale: The mayor was indirectly elected by the plenary assembly. A legal clause required that mayoral candidates earned the vote of an absolute majority of councillors, or else the candidate of the most-voted party in the assembly was to be automatically appointed to the post. In the event of a tie, the appointee would be determined by lot. The electoral law allowed for

parties A party is a gathering of people who have been invited by a host for the purposes of socializing, conversation, recreation, or as part of a festival or other commemoration or celebration of a special occasion. A party will often feature fo ...

and

federations A federation (also known as a federal state) is a political entity characterized by a union of partially self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a central federal government ( federalism). In a federation, the self-governi ...

registered in the

interior ministry An interior ministry (sometimes called a ministry of internal affairs or ministry of home affairs) is a government department that is responsible for internal affairs. Lists of current ministries of internal affairs Named "ministry" * Ministry ...

coalitions A coalition is a group formed when two or more people or groups temporarily work together to achieve a common goal. The term is most frequently used to denote a formation of power in political or economical spaces. Formation According to ''A Gui ...

and groupings of electors to present lists of candidates. Parties and federations intending to form a coalition ahead of an election were required to inform the relevant Electoral Commission within ten days of the election call, whereas groupings of electors needed to secure the signature of a determined amount of the electors registered in the municipality for which they were seeking election, disallowing electors from signing for more than one list of candidates. For the case of Barcelona, as its population was over 1,000,001, at least 8,000 signatures were required.

Opinion polls

The table below lists voting intention estimates in reverse chronological order, showing the most recent first and using the dates when the survey fieldwork was done, as opposed to the date of publication. Where the fieldwork dates are unknown, the date of publication is given instead. The highest percentage figure in each polling survey is displayed with its background shaded in the leading party's colour. If a tie ensues, this is applied to the figures with the highest percentages. The "Lead" column on the right shows the percentage-point difference between the parties with the highest percentages in a poll. When available, seat projections determined by the polling organisations are displayed below (or in place of) the percentages in a smaller font; 21 seats were required for an

absolute majority A supermajority, supra-majority, qualified majority, or special majority is a requirement for a proposal to gain a specified level of support which is greater than the threshold of more than one-half used for a simple majority. Supermajority ru ...

in the

(22 until 1 January 1992). ;

Results

Notes

References

;Opinion poll sources ;Other {{Barcelona elections

1995 File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is O. J. Simpson murder case, acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the 1994, year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The ...

1990s in Barcelona 1995 in Catalonia