Encasillado

The "encasillado" was the system used to assign the seats in the general elections of the Bourbon Restoration period in Spain before they were held. This ensured through electoral fraud that the seats would be as selected by the government and the wide cacique network spread throughout the territory. It was named as such because it was a matter of "fitting" (in Spanish: encajar, encasillar) the candidates of the two "parties of the day" (Conservative and Liberal) in the "grid of casillas" constituted by the more than 300 uninominal districts and the approximately one hundred seats of the 26 plurinominal 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 the parliamentary regimes (not fraudulent).