Parliamentary Candidate Selection Processes in Spain: Analysing National and Regional Levels

The selection of candidates is a key activity in the life of any political party, since the result of such process will determine who will occupy positions of power to the detriment of others. It will also help to determine which interests will be defended on behalf of the party and which will not. Therefore, depending on the model of selection that is applied, certain elements of the party and certain types of candidates will prevail over others. This paper analyses the procedure for selecting parliamentary candidates for both the regional and the national lists in the Spanish system. For this purpose, firstly, the internal regulation of each party with parliamentary representation is studied. Secondly, the opinion of members of parliament at both regional and national level about the selection process in their own party is analyzed. In doing so, we use survey data generated in the framework of the project entitled “Citizenship and parliamentarians in times of crisis and democratic renewal: The comparative case of Spain in the context of Southern Europe”. The results shed light about the selection process in both the different parties and the different parliaments in Spain from a comparative perspective.