The "encasillado" was the system used to assign the seats in the general elections of theBourbon Restoration period in Spain before they were held. This ensured throughelectoral fraud that the seats would be as selected by the government and the widecacique network spread throughout the territory. It was named as such because it was a matter of "fitting" (inSpanish:encajar, encasillar) the candidates of the two "parties of the day" (Conservative andLiberal) in the "grid ofcasillas" constituted by the more than 300uninominal districts and the approximately one hundred seats of the 26plurinominal constituencies. The person in charge of carrying out the "encasillado" was the Minister of the Interior of the incoming government, who thus ensured a comfortable majority in Parliament, since in the political regime of the Restoration the governments changed before the elections, and not after as in theparliamentary regimes (not fraudulent).[2]
The encasillado was the first (and fundamental) step in the mechanism ofelectoral fraud that characterized theelections during the Bourbon Restoration in Spain ―and that theelectoral system byuninominal districts greatly facilitated―. The objective was the peaceful distribution of seats between the "party of the day" that had just been given the task of forming a government by the Crown and the party that had governed until then and was now in opposition. The former obtained a comfortable majority ofministerial deputies in the Cortes and the latter a much smaller number of seats but enough to play its role of "loyal opposition" ―generally half a hundred―. HistorianJosé Varela Ortega has definedencasillado as follows: "Literally, it is and meant the process by which "the Minister of the Interior manufactures the elections" by placing in casillas corresponding to each district the names of the candidates ―whether ministerial or opposition― that the government had decided to sponsor or tolerate".[3]
The meeting to carry out the "encasillado" took place at the headquarters of theMinistry of Home Affairs, hence, as Varela Ortega has pointed out, "for the candidate, the election was decided in the corridors of the Ministry of Home Affairs".[4] There the minister, who had become "the Great Elector" ―whose greatest exponent wasFrancisco Romero Robledo, who inherited the epithet ofJosé Posada Herrera from theElizabethan period, because like him he possessed an "extraordinary capacity to maneuver from the ministry and few scruples to do so, so that the results would be in accordance with the wishes of the Government and his own"―,[5] agreed with the representative of the outgoing government party on the distribution of the districts, which also usually included those to be granted tonon-dynastic parties ―for example, the governments always respected the seat ofGumersindo de Azcárate forLeón or that of the CarlistMatías Barrio y Mier forCervera de Pisuerga―.[6]
The Minister of the Interior and the representative of the outgoing government decided ―although in the negotiations also intervened the caciques and the leaders of the factions of the parties― on theavailable districts ("docile", "dead" or "mostrencos"), whose candidates received the name of "cuneros" or "transhumantes" (the historianCarmelo Romero Salvador calls them "birds of passage") because they lacked roots in the same, while in principle the districts were left out of the distribution, in which a certain deputy, conservative or liberal, was guaranteed the election thanks to theclientelistic networks that he had carved out there ―thus becoming the local oligarch orgreat cacique―, so it was useless to present an alternative candidate because he would be defeated, although they did not stop trying if the one who occupied it was of the opposite party to that of the government.[7][8][9] José Varela Ortega has called the deputies of these last districts "natural candidates, with roots or in their own right",[10] and Carmelo Romero Salvador "hermit crabs" since, "just as those small crustaceans get into an empty shell from which it is very difficult to dislodge them, so they also took over the representation of a district becoming irremovable in it", thus constituting "lastingcacicatos, with the same deputy throughout several legislatures".[11]
Romero Salvador pointed out that throughout the Restoration, the districts occupied by "hermit crabs" ―who repeated the same seat regardless of which party was in government― were increasing, with the consequent decrease of the "free" districts, which narrowed the governments' margin of maneuver to place the deputies in the "encasillado". "The proof of this lies in the fact that by always winning the elections the party that called them, the difference in seats with the other party became smaller and smaller throughout the first two decades of the 20th century".[12]
This same historian has compiled a list of the deputies for the same district for ten or more times during the Restoration period, which totals 68: 32 conservatives and 32 liberals, plus three republicans (one of themGumersindo de Azcárate for the district ofLeón)[13] and one independent Catholic (for the district ofZumaya). Among the conservativesAntonio Maura (nineteen times deputy uninterruptedly between 1891 and 1923 for the district ofPalma de Mallorca),Francisco Romero Robledo (deputy during 21 legislatures for different districts) andEduardo Dato (17 legislatures, twelve of them for the district ofMurias de Paredes) stand out; and among the liberalsJosé Canalejas (thirteen legislatures for different districts) and theCount of Romanones (seventeen uninterrupted legislatures for the district ofGuadalajara). In addition, he has verified the existence of family dynasties of deputies such as those headed byCánovas ―three brothers, four nephews, a brother-in-law and other brother-in-law were deputies―, bySagasta ―a son, a son-in-law, a grandson and several uncles and cousins―, byFrancisco Silvela ―two brothers, his father-in-law, his brothers-in-law and a nephew―, or byAntonio Maura ―three sons―. There were also deputies who "inherited" their parents' districts.[14] The parliamentary chronicler of the conservative newspaperABCWenceslao Fernández Flórez wrote in 1916:[15]
When we write these lines, that precept that the nation cannot be the patrimony of any family or person has not yet been violated. It is not yet, in fact, of a single family, but of four or five, who have sons, sons-in-law, uncles, cousins, nephews, grandchildren and brothers-in-law in all the positions and in all the Chambers.
Article 29 of theElectoral Law of 1907, promoted by the conservativeAntonio Maura, simplified the "encasillado" by establishing that in those districts where only one candidate was presented, he would be elected without the need to vote (Carmelo Romero Salvador has highlighted the paradox of depriving some voters of the vote when the law for the first time in Spain established it as a duty and fined those who did not vote). Article 29 was in effect during the following seven elections and in these 734 seats, a quarter of the total, were covered by this system ―in 1916, called and won by the government of the liberalCount of Romanones, andin 1923, called and won by the government of the liberalManuel García Prieto, a third of the deputies obtained their seats without going through the ballot box; "In both elections there were almost as many voters deprived of being able to exercise their vote (one million seven hundred thousand) as there were voters (two million) in those districts and constituencies in which there was an election"―.[16] Carmelo Romero Salvador explained the widespread application of article 29 as follows: "Given that going to the polls always meant for parties and candidates, even when the election was assured, inconveniences, expenses and a greater dependence on the personal and collective requests of the voters, reaching agreements to avoid competition between them became a highly desirable objective".[17]