1996 Spanish general election

A general election was held in Spain on 3 March 1996 to elect the members of the 6th Cortes Generales under the Spanish Constitution of 1978. All 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as 208 of 257 seats in the Senate. It was held concurrently with a regional election in Andalusia and fifteen months ahead of schedule, after a legislative term of just two-and-a-half years.

Ever since forming a minority government after its victory in the 1993 election, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) had to deal with the impact of the early 1990s recession in the Spanish economy, amid soaring unemployment, an increase in public deficit and GDP contraction. Internal divisions flourished at the 1994 PSOE congress between supporters of Prime Minister Felipe González and those of deputy leader Alfonso Guerra. González's cabinet was also rocked by the unveiling of a string of scandals, including accusations of misusing the "reserved funds" (the government's black budget for special operations) to pay for undeclared bonuses to high-ranking officials (the Roldán affair) and fund a "dirty war" against the ETA group through the GAL death squads; ongoing investigations into the Filesa and Ibercorp affairs; alleged tax evasion by former and current cabinet members; and illegal espionage by the CESID, the Spanish intelligence agency. Amid mounting political pressure, a snap election was triggered after Convergence and Union (CiU) withdrew its confidence and supply support from the government in mid 1995 and helped vote down the 1996 General State Budget in October that year.

The election resulted in the first PSOE defeat in a general election since 1979, but opinion poll predictions of a landslide victory by the opposition José María Aznar's People's Party (PP)—which had achieved resounding wins in the 1994 European Parliament election and the 1995 local and regional elections—failed to materialize. The PP, which aimed to secure enough support to govern alone (Aznar's coined "sufficient majority"), saw the election turn into the closest result between the two major parties in the Spanish democratic period to date; a PSOE comeback, fueled by a strong 77.4% voter turnout (the highest scored ever since) left the PP leading by just 1.2 percentage points and 290,000 votes, falling 20 seats short of an outright overall majority. Julio Anguita's United Left—which had hoped to come close or even surpass the PSOE, in the so-called sorpasso—also failed to meet expectations, despite scoring over 10% in their best overall result in a general election since the Communist Party of Spain's one in 1979.