Electoral system The
Parliament of Galicia was the
devolved,
unicameral legislature of the
autonomous community of
Galicia, having legislative power in regional matters as defined by the
Spanish Constitution and the
Galician Statute of Autonomy, as well as the ability to vote confidence in or withdraw it from a
regional president. Voting for the Parliament was on the basis of
universal suffrage, which comprised all nationals over 18 years of age, registered in Galicia and in full enjoyment of their political rights. Additionally,
Galicians abroad were required to
apply for voting before being permitted to vote, a system known as "begged" or expat vote (). The 75 members of the Parliament of Galicia were elected using the
D'Hondt method and a
closed list proportional representation, with an
electoral threshold of five percent of valid votes—which included blank ballots—being applied in each constituency. Seats were allocated to constituencies, corresponding to the
provinces of
A Coruña,
Lugo,
Ourense and
Pontevedra, with each being allocated an initial minimum of 10 seats and the remaining 35 being distributed in proportion to their populations. As a result of the aforementioned allocation, each Parliament constituency was entitled the following seats: In smaller constituencies, the use of the electoral method resulted in an
effective threshold based on the
district magnitude and the distribution of votes among candidacies.
Election date The term of the Parliament of Galicia expired four years after the date of its previous election, unless it was dissolved earlier. The election
decree was required to be issued no later than the twenty-fifth day prior to the expiration date of parliament and published on the following day in the
Official Journal of Galicia (DOG), with election day taking place between the fifty-fourth and the sixtieth day from publication. The
previous election was held on 25 September 2016, which meant that the legislature's term would have expired on 25 September 2020. The election decree was required to be published in the DOG no later than 1 September 2020, with the election taking place up to the sixtieth day from publication, setting the latest possible election date for the Parliament on 30 October 2020. The decision of
Catalan president Quim Torra on 29 January 2020 to announce a
snap Catalan regional election to be held at some point throughout 2020 was said to have raised concerns within the Basque government of
Lehendakari Iñigo Urkullu, whose party, the
Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), sought to prevent the
next Basque regional election—which was due by autumn of 2020 at the latest—from being held simultaneously to prevent any interference from the Catalan political debate into the Basque campaign. This in turn increased pressure on
Galician president Alberto Núñez Feijóo to unveil the Galician election date, with speculation mounting on whether he would coordinate the electoral timing with that of a hypothetical snap Basque election—as had happened in 2009, 2012 and 2016—or would let the legislature reach its natural end, thus bringing the election to the autumn of 2020.
La Vanguardia reported on 9 February that Feijóo could be interested in waiting for an autumn election to be held concurrently with the Catalan one, at a time when he had not yet revealed whether he would be running for a fourth time in office. On 10 February, Urkullu confirmed the Basque election for 5 April, with Feijóo commenting that he would be making a choice on the date of the Galician election "immediately" but that it would not be affected by Urkullu's decision. In response to the Basque announcement, Feijóo summoned his government to an urgency meeting later in the same day and decided to trigger a snap election to be held simultaneously on 5 April. ==Parliamentary composition==