Spanish election: Conservatives win but fall short of majority – as it happened

The leader of Spain’s main opposition Socialist party expressed hope that his fellow citizens would turn out in droves for a landmark election as he cast his vote in a wealthy Madrid suburb.

Pedro Sánchez, who showed up at a polling station in Pozuelo de Alarcón with his wife, said the “best news we can hope for today is that we get a high turnout of voters. Spaniards know that today is a historic day.”

He added: “The future is not set in stone and we can write it with our vote.” (Via AP)

How have the party leaders spent polling day? This from Associated Press (AP):

The Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, has voted in a well-heeled Madrid suburb and then headed off for a long lunch with his family. Rajoy said he was confident “people will choose what they think is best for their country” as they decide whether to vote for his right-of-centre Popular Party, the country’s main opposition Socialist Party or two new upstart parties aiming to shake up Spain’s traditional two-party dominance.

Rajoy told reporters who swarmed around him at his polling station in the suburb of Aravaca that he would head in the evening to the Popular Party’s downtown Madrid headquarters to watch the results start coming in.

The Spanish consulate in London has been busy today. According to this tweet, UK-based Spaniards queued for five hours to vote.

Hats off to the residents of the Riojan hamlet of Villarroya, which once again became the first municipality in the region to close its ballot box - at 9.01 this morning. The impressive feat probably had something to do with the fact that there are just six people on the electoral register.

Still, as the mayor, Salvador Pérez, put it:

We were all down there first thing to exercise our right to vote.

In 2011, Villarroya closed its ballot box at 9.07am.

With the polls due to close in a few minutes, voter turnout looks to be slightly up compared with the last general election in 2011.

The government says turnout as of 6pm (1700 GMT) was 58.4 %; voter participation was 57.7% at the same point last time round.

With so much at stake, people are being encouraged - on Twitter and elsewhere - to get out and vote. As this tweet says: “All those who are going to be complaining about the election results tomorrow: if you’re not going to vote today, don’t grumble.”

What exactly is at stake? Who are the parties and what’s on voters’ minds? Here’s a taste of our election guide, courtesy of my colleague Alberto Nardelli.

Spain is electing all 350 members of its lower house, the Congress of Deputies, and most of the Senate (208 of 266 seats).

Since Spain’s transition to democracy at the end of the 1970s, general elections have been dominated by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE) or the centre-right People’s party (PP) and its earlier incarnations.

The only exceptions were the first two votes held after Francisco Franco’s death, in 1977 and 1979. Both saw the now-defunct Union of the Democratic Centre win minority administrations. At the last election, in 2011, the PP won 44.6% of the vote and an outright majority of 186 seats. The PSOE suffered the worst defeat for a sitting government in 30 years, losing nearly 4.5 million voters.

The big difference this time round, of course, has been the emergence of two new parties who are likely to draw votes from the People’s party and the Socialists. The economic upheaval of recent years has seen the rise of the anti-austerity party Podemos and the centre-right Ciudadanos. As our Madrid correspondent, Ashifa Kassam points out, a lot of political soul-searching is going on:

As Spaniards emerge from a debilitating economic crisis and grapple with issues such as double-digit unemployment, cuts to public services and the ongoing exodus of job-seekers from the country, much of the campaign has been focused on the need for political and institutional transformation.

‘I’m convinced that Spaniards will ask for change,’ Ciudadanos’ leader, Albert Rivera, 36, told supporters in Madrid on Friday as the election campaign drew to a close. ‘I’m convinced that these years of weariness, of corruption ... are coming to an end.’

In Valencia, Podemos’ Pablo Iglesias urged supporters to channel the hardship of recent years into political change. ‘We’re ready to lead a new transition in this country,’ said the 37-year-old. ‘This is the moment that all the difficulties and obstacles they’ve put in our way start to make sense, because we’ve made it to the end of the campaign with the possibility of winning.’

Spain’s interior ministry is taking a lot of heat for tweeting a picture of the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy of the PP, next to one of Adolfo Suárez, who, in 1977, became Spain’s first democratically elected prime minister following Franco’s death.

The accompanying caption reads: “Thirty-eight years of democratic history have passed between these two pictures.”

The apparent comparison between the two politicians has not gone unremarked. The tweet, which many are slamming as a piece of propaganda, is being attacked online. El País reports that the Socialists have complained to the central electoral council ...

Good evening and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Spanish general election. Today’s vote is the most hotly contested and unpredictable that the country has seen since its return to democracy following the Franco era, with the results likely to herald the end of the two-party dominance that has marked Spanish politics since the early 1980s.

The conservative People’s party and the Socialists – both of whom have alternated in power for decades - are expected to lose seats to anti-austerity party Podemos and centre-right Ciudadanos.

The polls close at 8pm Spanish time (1900 GMT) and we’re hoping for exit polls swiftly afterwards and a fairly complete picture by about 10.30pm (2130 GMT). Fingers crossed ...