A general election was held in Spain on 28 April 2019 to elect the members of the 13th Cortes Generales under the Spanish Constitution of 1978. All 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as 208 of 266 seats in the Senate. It was held concurrently with a regional election in the Valencian Community.

Following the 2016 election, the People's Party (PP) formed a minority government with confidence and supply support from Citizens (Cs) and Canarian Coalition, enabled by the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) abstaining from Mariano Rajoy's investiture after a party crisis saw the ousting of Pedro Sánchez as leader. Rajoy's second term in office was undermined by a constitutional crisis over the Catalan independence issue and the outcome of a regional election held thereafter, coupled with corruption scandals, the 2018 Spanish women's strike and pensioners' protests demanding pension hikes. In May 2018, the National Court found that the PP had profited from the kickbacks-for-contracts scheme in the Gürtel case and confirmed the existence of an illegal accounting and funding structure. Sánchez, who had been re-elected as PSOE leader in a party primary in 2017, brought down Rajoy's government through a motion of no confidence on 1 June 2018. Rajoy subsequently resigned as PP leader, being succeeded by Pablo Casado after a face-off with Rajoy's deputy, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, in a leadership contest in July.

Presiding over a minority government of 84 deputies, Pedro Sánchez struggled to maintain a working majority in the Congress with the support of the parties that had backed the no-confidence motion. The 2018 Andalusian regional election, which saw a strong performance of the far-right Vox party, resulted in the PSOE losing the regional government for the first time in history to a PP–Cs–Vox alliance. After the 2019 General State Budget was voted down in the Congress as a result of Republican Left of Catalonia and Catalan European Democratic Party siding against the government, Sánchez called a snap election to be held on 28 April, one month ahead of the "Super Sunday" of local, regional, and European Parliament elections scheduled for 26 May.

On a voter turnout of 71.8%, Sánchez's PSOE won a victory—the first for the party in a nationwide election in eleven years—with an improvement of 38 seats over its previous mark which mostly came at the expense of left-wing Unidas Podemos. The PSOE also became the largest party in the Senate for the first time since 1995, winning its first absolute majority of seats in that chamber since the 1989 election. The PP under Casado was reduced to 66 seats and 16.7% of the vote in what was dubbed the worst electoral setback for a major Spanish party since the collapse of the Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD) in 1982, and which was blamed to the party's shift to the right during the campaign. Cs saw an increase of support which brought them within striking distance of the PP, overcoming the latter in several major regions. The far-right Vox party entered Congress for the first time, but it failed to fulfill opinion polling expectations. The three-way split in the overall right-of-centre vote not only ended any chance of an Andalusian-inspired right-wing alliance, but it also ensured that Sánchez's PSOE would be the only party that could realistically form a government.

The 2016 general election resulted in a strengthened People's Party (PP), while the left-wing Unidos Podemos alliance failed to meet expectations of overtaking the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). Mariano Rajoy secured the support of Albert Rivera's Citizens (Cs) and Canarian Coalition for his investiture, but this was still not enough to guarantee his re-election as prime minister of Spain. Criticism of PSOE leader Pedro Sánchez for his opposition to Rajoy—seen as prolonging the political deadlock—intensified after poor results in the Basque and Galician elections in September 2016. A party crisis followed, leading to Sánchez’s ousting and the appointment of a caretaker committee led by party rebels under Andalusian president Susana Díaz. The PSOE ultimately abstained in Rajoy's investiture, allowing a PP minority government to form and avoiding a third election. Díaz's bid to become party leader was defeated in the May 2017 primary, with PSOE members reinstating Sánchez on an anti-Rajoy platform.

Early in its second term, Rajoy's government faced a dockworkers' strike against an EU-mandated liberalization of port services. The PP also became entangled in a series of political scandals that led to the political downfall of PP's Madrid city council leader, Esperanza Aguirre (amid the Púnica and Lezo cases and accusations of judicial meddling and political cover-up affecting two former protégés). Rajoy himself was forced to testify as a witness in court (in the Gürtel case trial), the first sitting Spanish prime minister to do so. Former Caja Madrid chairs Miguel Blesa and Rodrigo Rato (the later also a former International Monetary Fund chief and economy minister in 1996–2004) were convicted for misusing corporate credit cards at the height of the financial crisis; Blesa would later commit suicide in July 2017. These developments prompted Unidos Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias—who had just overcome an internal challenge from Podemos's moderate sectors—to table a no-confidence motion in June 2017. The motion failed by 170–82, as the PSOE and other opposition parties abstained rather than support Iglesias as prime minister. Rajoy maintained stability by securing support from the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) to his government's 2017 and 2018 General State Budgets.

Pressure on the Spanish government intensified as a major constitutional crisis unfolded in Catalonia over the 2017 independence referendum. The Catalan parliament's initial steps to approve the referendum bill and a framework for an independent state were suspended by the Constitutional Court, while police operations against the preparations—including searches, raids, arrests of Catalan government officials and financial intervention—parked protests and accusations that the government was imposing a de facto state of emergency. The referendum went ahead amid a violent police crackdown, and the Catalan parliament later voted to unilaterally declare independence. In response, central authorities imposed direct rule over Catalonia and remove the regional authorities. Catalan president Carles Puigdemont fled to Belgium with part of his cabinet, facing charges of sedition, rebellion and embezzlement. Rajoy then dissolved the Catalan parliament and called a snap regional election for 21 December 2017, which backfired: pro-independence parties retained their majority, Cs strengthened its position in the region, and the PP was nearly wiped out.

The Catalan election result boosted Cs nationally, propelling it to first place in several opinion polls. Rajoy's government was further weakened by the success of the 2018 Spanish women's strike on International Women's Day, driven by public outcry over gender-based violence, wage inequality, and high-profile cases such the La Manada gang rape; as well as by protests from pensioners over declining pensions. Another scandal involved the Madrilenian president, Cristina Cifuentes, accused of fraudulently obtaining a master's degree from King Juan Carlos University; this escalated after a cover-up involving the forgery of public instruments was uncovered. Cifuentes eventually resigned in April 2018 following the release of a 2011 video showing her involvement in a face cream shoplifting incident.