1983 Extremaduran regional election

Under the 1983 Statute of Autonomy, the Assembly of Extremadura was the unicameral legislature of the homonymous autonomous community, having legislative power in devolved matters, as well as the ability to grant or withdraw confidence from a regional president.^[2] The electoral and procedural rules were supplemented by national law provisions (which were those used in the 1977 general election).^[3]

The electoral law allowed for parties and federations registered in the interior ministry, alliances and groupings of electors to present lists of candidates. Parties and federations intending to form an alliance were required to inform the relevant electoral commission within 15 days of the election call, whereas groupings of electors needed to secure the signature of at least one permille—and, in any case, 500 signatures—of the electorate in the constituencies for which they sought election, disallowing electors from signing for more than one list.^[16]

Below is a list of the main parties and alliances which contested the election:

More information Candidacy, Parties and alliances ...

Candidacy		Parties and alliances	Candidate		Ideology	Gov.	Ref.
	PSOE	List Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE)		Juan Carlos Rodríguez Ibarra	Social democracy		[15] [17]
	AP–PDP–UL	List People's Alliance (AP) People's Democratic Party (PDP) Liberal Union (UL)		Adolfo Díaz-Ambrona	Conservatism Christian democracy
	EU	List United Extremadura (EU)		Pedro Cañada	Regionalism
	PCE	List Communist Party of Spain (PCE)		Manuel Pareja	Eurocommunism

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The electoral disaster of the Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD) in the October 1982 general election and the outcome of its extraordinary congress held in December, in which the party's leadership chose to transform the UCD into a christian democratic political force,^[18] brought the party to a process of virtual disintegration as many of its remaining members either switched party allegiances, split into new, independent candidacies or left politics altogether.^[19][20] Subsequent attempts to seek electoral allies ahead of the incoming 1983 local and regional elections, mainly the conservative People's Alliance (AP) and the christian democratic People's Democratic Party (PDP),^[21][22] had limited success due to concerns from both AP and UCD over such alliance policy:^[23][24] AP strongly rejected any agreement that implied any sort of global coalition with UCD due to the party's ongoing decomposition,^[25][26] and prospects about a possible PDP–UCD merger did not come into fruition because of the latter's reluctance to dilute its brand within another party.^[27][28][29] By the time the UCD's executive had voted for the liquidation of the party's mounting debts and its subsequent dissolution on 18 February 1983,^[30][31][32] electoral alliances with the AP–PDP coalition had only been agreed in some provinces of the Basque Country and Galicia.^[33][34][35]

Together with AP, the PDP had agreed to maintain their general election alliance—now rebranded as the People's Coalition—for the May local and regional elections,^[36][37][38] with the inclusion of the Liberal Union (UL), a political party created in January 1983 out of independents from the AP–PDP coalition in an attempt to appeal to former UCD liberal voters.^[35][39] The Coalition had seen its numbers soar from late February as a result of many former members from the UCD's christian democratic wing joining the PDP.^[40][41][42]