The Official State Gazette has published this Tuesday Royal Decree 400/2023, of May 29, dissolving the Congress of Deputies and the Senate and calling for elections, which will be held on Sunday, July 23. The new Chambers will be constituted on Thursday, August 17 at 10:00 a.m., within a period of 25 days after the elections, as established in article 68.6 of the Constitution.
The royal decree of dissolution of the Chambers, which takes effect as of today, and of the call for elections also specifies the number of deputies that will be elected in each electoral district, in accordance with the procedure regulated in article 162 of the Organic Law of the Regime General Electoral (LOREG).
The Congress of Deputies, according to the LOREG, is made up of 350 deputies. Each of the fifty provinces corresponds to an initial minimum of two deputies and to the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, one seat each. The remaining 248 deputies will be distributed among the provinces in proportion to their population.
Thus, the convocation decree must specify the number of deputies to be elected in each constituency, in accordance with the provisions of this article. For these elections, Badajoz will elect 5 seats and Valencia, 16, while in the last electoral call of 2019 they chose 6 and 15 respectively. The rest of constituencies maintain the same figure.
As for the Senate, article 165 of the LOREG is applicable. Each provincial constituency elects four senators; the insular circumscriptions of Gran Canaria, Mallorca and Tenerife elect three senators, and Ibiza-Formentera, Menorca, Fuerteventura, Gomera, Hierro, Lanzarote and La Palma, one each. For their part, Ceuta and Melilla each elect two senators.
The convocation decree also specifies the start and end dates of the electoral campaign, which lasts 15 days. Thus, in this case, it will begin at zero hours on Friday, July 7, and end at twenty-four hours on Friday, July 21.
The Congress and the Senate resulting from the elections on July 23 will meet on August 17 in a constitutive session at 10:00 a.m. In said session, the first of the XV Legislature, the members of the Chamber will elect the Presidency of Congress, the four Vice-Presidencies and the four Secretaries that form the Table of the Chamber, as regulated by articles 36 and 37 of the Regulations of Congress. . Next, the elected deputies will be called one by one to abide by the Constitution and thus assume their full status as deputies.
From the constitution of the Chamber and for a period of five days, the parliamentary groups will be constituted, in accordance with Title II of the Regulations of Congress. Also, once the new Congress of Deputies of the XV Legislature is constituted, the procedure, established in article 99 of the Constitution, for the investiture of the new president of the Government by the Lower House, will begin, whose debate is regulated in articles 170 to 172 of the Regulation.
Once the dissolution of the Chambers of the XIV Legislature has been decreed, the mandate of the deputies elected on November 10, 2019 ends, except for the members of the Permanent Deputation, a body of a special nature that is responsible for ensuring the powers of the Chamber when it is not in session, its mandate has expired or it has been dissolved.
In the case of dissolution of the Chambers, as is the case, or expiration of the parliamentary mandate, the Permanent Delegation assumes the powers of the Chamber on the validation or repeal of the decree-laws and the information, authorization or declaration, according to the cases, in relation to the states of alarm, exception and siege, provided for in article 116 of the Constitution.
The composition of the Permanent Deputation is agreed at the beginning of each legislature. The body is chaired by the president of the Congress, Meritxell Batet. And her Table is currently completed by the first and second vice presidents, Alfonso Gómez de Celis and Ana Pastor, and the first secretary, Javier Sánchez. The members, a total of 68, are deputies appointed by each parliamentary group in accordance with the distribution proportional to the composition of the Plenary.
Thus, it is made up of 23 deputies from the Socialist Group, 17 from the Popular Group, 10 from the VOX Group, 7 from the Confederal Group of United Podemos-En Comú Podem-Galicia en Común, 3 from the Republican Group, 2 from the Plural Group, 2 from the Citizens, 1 from the Basque Group (EAJ-PNV), 1 from the Euskal Herria Bildu Group and 2 from the Mixed Group.
