Barcelona is part of an emptied Spain, the electoral one. Its 1.2 million inhabitants gained since 1977 do not prevent the paradox that it forms part of the seventeen provinces that have lost deputies since 1986, when the territorial distribution of Congress began to be updated according to the population register.
For the elections of 23-J Badajoz gives up a seat in the San Jerónimo race to Valencia, the province that since 1986 oscillates between 15 and 16 minutes.
The balance since 1977 is 23 seats that have changed provinces. This movement started mainly from the north and west, as well as part of the center and inland Andalusia, towards the Mediterranean, except for Barcelona, Madrid and the Canary Islands. These movements in the geography of the seats in Congress partially reflect the demographic transformation of Spain since 1977, when it gained 11 million inhabitants, 31% more, with very uneven growth in the territory.
This incomplete reflection of the variations in the number of inhabitants is due to the fact that 102 of the 350 seats, 29%, are not distributed according to population criteria. They are already awarded in advance according to "the vote of the hectares", an expression coined in the transition to criticize the establishment of a minimum of two deputies for each of the 50 provinces and a fixed one for both Ceuta and Melilla, which clashes with the principle of equal voting. In addition, the minimum was created while the Congress was cut to 350 deputies, compared to 473 at the end of the Second Republic and 409 of the Restoration. Thus, it is the smallest since 1864.
In a Congress proportional to the population, Madrid would have 12 more seats, and Barcelona, 10. Among the victims of this distribution would be, for example, Soria and Teruel, two of the provinces on a war footing under the slogan of emptied Spain, which shows that their bonus in seats did not serve to develop them but to partisan interests.
While in Portugal the d'Hondt rule is used both to distribute the seats between the parties and to distribute them territorially, in Spain this last operation is done with another method, the Hare quota, much more favorable for minorities.
This is another move by the Government of Adolfo Suárez, since for the parties he established d'Hondt, beneficial for the big ones like his Union of the Democratic Center (UCD), and for the provinces, Hare, to the extent of the sparsely populated Suarista bastions .
Hare has a problem, the so-called Alabama paradox, discovered in the 19th century. It was found that by adding one more seat in the United States House of Representatives, and keeping the same population, Alabama lost one representative. In Spain it has been shown theoretically that it could happen, but it is not possible because the size of the Congress has not been touched since 1977.
Yes, the evolution of Barcelona is surprising, the second province that has gained the most population, behind Madrid, which exceeded it in number of inhabitants.
In percentage, the Barcelona balance is one point below the average and is the twentieth, in a ranking led by the Balearic Islands, which doubled. But with falls of 18%, Ávila, Teruel and Palencia continue with the same seats as in 1979. They lost them, in some cases gaining or stabilized population and in others with marked falls, in the northwest, all of Galicia, Asturias and León; in the north, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa; in the west, Zamora, Cáceres and Badajoz; in the center and surrounding areas, Cuenca, Soria and Zaragoza, as well as Barcelona and, in inland Andalusia, Córdoba and Jaén. The latter gave up two, such as Badajoz, León and Bizkaia, while in Asturias there were three.
Madrid, with its five, was the most benefited, which does not prevent its vote, like the Barcelonan, from continuing to be worth a quarter less than the average. Toledo is the only country in the interior that has grown, while the increase has been concentrated in tourist development areas, especially Alicante, Malaga, the Balearic Islands, Murcia and Las Palmas, as well as Valencia, Almería, Girona, Tarragona and Cádiz.
There is a Spain that is filled with more seats, another that is emptied with fewer and a third, the most numerous, that remains the same as in 1979. The changes are natural because the demographic distribution varies. The problem always resides, in that combination of people and hectares, in a very small Congress for the current population and, above all, for its 52 constituencies.
