2011 Madrid City Council election
The 2011 Madrid City Council election, also the 2011 Madrid municipal election, was held on Sunday, 22 May 2011, to elect the 9th City Council of the municipality of Madrid. All 57 seats in the City Council were up for election. The election was held simultaneously with regional elections in thirteen autonomous communities and local elections all throughout Spain.
The People's Party won its 6th consecutive absolute majority of seats in the City Council, albeit with a diminished voter base, suffering its worst loss of support in the city up until that time. Only the collapse of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party vote, which obtained the worst result of its history as a result of the criticised José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's premiership in the national government, was larger. United Left benefitted from the PSOE debacle, while newly founded Union, Progress and Democracy attracted votes from sectors disenchanted with both PSOE and PP and entered the City Council in the first election in which they stood.
Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, who was re-elected for a third term in office, left the mayoralty in late 2011 to become Justice Minister, after his party won the 2011 Spanish general election and Mariano Rajoy was elected Prime Minister. He was succeeded as mayor by Ana Botella.
Electoral system
The City Council of Madrid was the top-tier administrative and governing body of the municipality of Madrid, composed of the mayor, the government council and the elected plenary assembly. Elections to the local councils in Spain were fixed for the fourth Sunday of May every four years.Voting for the local assembly was on the basis of universal suffrage, which comprised all nationals over eighteen, registered and residing in the municipality of Madrid and in full enjoyment of their political rights, as well as resident non-national European citizens and those whose country of origin allowed Spanish nationals to vote in their own elections by virtue of a treaty. Local councillors were elected using the D'Hondt method and a closed list proportional representation, with a threshold of five percent of valid votes—which included blank ballots—being applied in each local council. Parties not reaching the threshold were not taken into consideration for seat distribution. Councillors were allocated to municipal councils based on the following scale:
| Population | Councillors |
| <100 | 3 |
| 101–250 | 5 |
| 251–1,000 | 7 |
| 1,001–2,000 | 9 |
| 2,001–5,000 | 11 |
| 5,001–10,000 | 13 |
| 10,001–20,000 | 17 |
| 20,001–50,000 | 21 |
| 50,001–100,000 | 25 |
| >100,001 | +1 per each 100,000 inhabitants or fraction +1 if total is an even number |
The mayor was indirectly elected by the plenary assembly. A legal clause required that mayoral candidates earned the vote of an absolute majority of councillors, or else the candidate of the most-voted party in the assembly was to be automatically appointed to the post. In the event of a tie, a toss-up would determine the appointee.
The electoral law allowed for parties and federations registered in the interior ministry, coalitions and groupings of electors to present lists of candidates. Parties and federations intending to form a coalition ahead of an election were required to inform the relevant Electoral Commission within ten days of the election call, whereas groupings of electors needed to secure the signature of a determined amount of the electors registered in the municipality for which they were seeking election, disallowing electors from signing for more than one list of candidates. For the case of Madrid, as its population was over 1,000,001, at least 8,000 signatures were required.