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The general elections of December 2015 supposed the opening of a new political cycle in Spain. The high electoral volatility, the increase of party fragmentation (with the strong emergence of two new political forces) and the fall in the percentage of votes of the two main groups, are symptoms of change in the party system. This paper describes the Spanish elections from 1977 to 2016 and aims to delimit electoral cycles over almost forty years of democracy. For this purpose, describes the electoral results, the type of party system (focusing on electoral volatility levels, ideological polarization, party fragmentation and electoral competitiveness), the governments formation and the political parties with representation in the Congress of Deputies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Constitutional reform made in Spain last summer has been discussed very deeply due to its content and to the way it has been made. It seems like concepts as sovereignty, democracy, constitutional moment, that are important in order to justify our political system, are secondary compared to the demands of Germany and the markets. In this paper, the reform is criticized from a constitutional view of the State, the Law and the democracy. It is argued that the reform of the article 135 goes against the agreements and the foundations of the constitutional model and, in addition, goes against the content of the Constitution of 1978 canceling the Social State. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]