Turnout: 60.73%
About this election
Spain's European Parliament election of 26 May 2019 was held on a "super Sunday", the same day as municipal elections across the country and regional elections in twelve of the seventeen autonomous communities. Coming barely a month after Pedro Sánchez's general-election victory, it confirmed the Socialists' return to dominance: the PSOE finished comfortably first, well ahead of a People's Party still reeling from its April collapse, and the result marked the high-water mark of Sánchez's first period in office.
For European elections Spain forms a single nationwide constituency, and its members of the European Parliament are elected by closed-list proportional representation using the D'Hondt method with no electoral threshold. This makes the European vote the purest available measure of each party's raw national support, free of the province-by-province distortions of a general election, and it allows small and regionally based parties to pool their votes across the whole country into joint lists.
Held in the slipstream of the April general election, the campaign was effectively a continuation of national politics, with the same leaders and the same arguments about the economy, Catalonia and the rise of Vox. Several nationalist forces grouped together: the Catalan ERC, EH Bildu and the BNG ran as Ahora Repúblicas, while the exiled Carles Puigdemont headed a JxCat-led list (Lliures per Europa) and the PNV anchored the Coalition for a Solidary Europe.
The PSOE won 32.86% and 21 seats, far ahead of the PP on 20.15% and 13. Citizens took 12.18% and 8 seats, Unidas Podemos 10.07% and 6, and Vox 6.21% and 4. The pro-independence Ahora Repúblicas list won 5.58% and 3 seats, Puigdemont's list 4.54% and 3, and the PNV-led coalition 2.82% and 1. Turnout was 60.73%, boosted by the concurrent local and regional elections. Spain was allocated 54 seats, rising to 59 once the United Kingdom left the EU.
The result cemented the PSOE's standing as the dominant national party in the spring of 2019, though it did nothing to resolve the deadlock over forming a national government, which would collapse over the summer and force the November repeat election. At the European level the election sent a strengthened Socialist delegation to Brussels and returned the symbolically important figure of Carles Puigdemont, whose right to take up his seat became the subject of a prolonged legal battle.
Because the whole country is a single constituency, the seats reflect the national vote, but the map of which party came first in each autonomous community showed the PSOE leading almost everywhere — across the south, the centre and the north-west — while Puigdemont's list topped the poll in Catalonia and the PNV-led coalition led in the Basque Country.
Official results from the Spanish Ministry of the Interior (infoelectoral.interior.gob.es). Vote shares are of valid votes; the regional map is coloured by the leading party in each autonomous community.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.