The goal for next year will be to surpass the participation recorded in 2023, when for the first time since democracy was restored, it fell below 60%. The election cycle with the highest abstention in the last half-century was the first one, in 1979, when in Lleida, 60.77% of eligible voters cast their ballots.
Since then, twelve local elections have been held, with participation rates ranging between 62% and 69%. The election with the lowest abstention was in 2003, while the least participatory was twenty years later, in 2023.
This downward trend in participation was not unique to Lleida but was also observed across Catalonia and Spain as a whole.
In Lleida, the number of eligible voters has grown by 13% in nearly half a century, increasing from 267,594 in 1979 to 303,142 voters in 2023.




