On November 10, voters are called to elect 208 senators in 52 districts. The system that governs the election of the representatives who will sit in the Senate is that of open lists, the great difference with the election of deputies of Congress. These are the keys to understanding the Senate vote. .
How to vote for the Senate
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The 208 senators who will come out of the vote on November 10 will be chosen by direct election. Open list means that on the sepia-colored ballot, the voter can mark the names that he prefers, even a mixture of profiles from different parties can be made.
According to , four senators are elected per province, two for each of the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, three in Gran Canaria, Tenerife and Mallorca and one in Ibiza-Formentera, Menorca, Fuerteventura, La Gomera, El Hierro, and in the island of La Palma.
A limit is established here for the voters: they will be able to elect three candidates for the provincial constituencies (four representatives), two for Gran Canaria, Mallorca, Tenerife (three representatives) plus Ceuta and Melilla and one in the others.
Those 208 senators who are elected on election day are not the total number of members that will be in the Upper House, there are 58 seats left to reach the 266 total. Where do they come from? They are designated by the autonomous parliaments: 35 have come out of the elections that were held in 14 autonomies on May 26 (more than the Valencian ones that are ahead of 28-A) and the other 23 come from the Autonomous Assemblies of Andalusia, Galicia, Catalonia and the Basque Country, which previously held regional elections and will maintain their seats in the absence of a change in their parliamentary majorities in the short term.
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What role does the Senate have?
Article 69 of the Spanish Constitution describes the Senate as “the Chamber of territorial representation”. As established by the Magna Carta, the Senate is elected for four years and the mandate of the Senators ends four years after their election or the day of the dissolution of the Chamber.
The territorial sense from which the Senate is born is explained in the following functions: give birth to cooperation between Autonomous Communities, endow and regulate the Interterritorial Compensation Fund, oblige the Autonomous Communities to comply with the law and the Constitution, prevent actions by the Communities that contravene the development of the country (an example of this was the application of article 155 in Catalonia in 2017) or ratify or prevent the signing of international treaties.
Other functions of the Upper House:
· Legislative, which it shares with the Congress of Deputies or Lower House and in which it occupies a lower position (unless it is a change on the Interterritorial Compensation Fund, except in which the debate begins in the Senate )
· Control of the Government (from which it can request information when it deems appropriate or subject its management to debate).
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