Congress of Deputies

Congress of Deputies

The Congress of Deputies is the lower house of the Cortes Generales, Spain’s legislative branch. The Congress meets in the Palace of the Parliament in Madrid. It has 350 members elected by constituencies by closed list proportional representation using the D’Hondt method. Deputies serve four-year terms.

The Congress of Deputies (Spanish: Congreso de los Diputados) is the lower house of the Cortes Generales, Spain’s legislative ranch. The Congress meets in the Palace of the Parliament (Palacio de las Cortes) in Madrid.

It has 350 members elected by constituencies (matching fifty Spanish provinces and two autonomous cities) by closed list propotional representation using the D’Hondt method. Deputies serve four-year terms. The presiding officer is the President of the Congress of Deputies, who is elected by the members thereof. It is the analogue to a speaker.

In the Congress, MPs from the political parties, or groups of parties, form parliamentary groups. Groups must be formed by at least 15 deputies, but a group can also be formed with only five deputies if the parties got at least 5% of the nationwide vote, or 15% of the votes in the constituencies in which they ran. The deputies belonging to parties who cannot create their own parliamentary group form the Mixed Group.

After the 2019 general election in April, the number of female deputies was up to 168 representing 48% of all members, making Spain the European country with the highest percentage of women in parliament; surpassing Sweden and Finland.