A motion of no confidence in the Spanish government of Felipe González was debated and voted in the Congress of Deputies between 26 and 30 March 1987. It was proposed by People's Alliance (AP) leader Antonio Hernández Mancha, motivated on the "deteriorating situation of the country" as a result of the social conflict sparked throughout the 1986–87 winter between the governing Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and its erstwhile allied Workers' General Union (UGT), which had grown increasingly critical of González's economic policies.^[1] However, the motion's true motives were attributed to Mancha's need for public promotion as both AP and opposition leader after his recent election to the post, as well as to his party's perceived urge to vindicate its primacy within the centre-right political spectrum in Spain amid the internal crisis that had been beleaguering it in the previous months.^[2][3]

It was soundly defeated by the absolute majority held by the PSOE in the Congress. It only secured the votes of two parties, the AP and Valencian Union (UV), with the other 15 parties either voting in favor or abstaining. Many deputies did not attend the vote at all.^[4] Having been unable to secure any significant support outside of his group, harshly criticized by other opposition parties and seeing some notorious gaffes during his speech, political commentators promptly came to regard the motion as a huge political blow for Hernández Mancha's career,^[5][6] who ultimately ended up retiring from politics in 1989.

The conservative People's Coalition had broken up following disappointing results in the 1986 Spanish general election: first with the departure of the People's Democratic Party (PDP) from the coalition's parliamentary group in July 1986,^[7] then with the Liberal Party (PL) following suit in January 1987.^[8][9] Dissensions within the People's Alliance had also seen the splitting of Jorge Verstrynge and Carlos Manglano in October to form the Democratic Renewal party (RD), and of Gabriel Camuñas and Carlos Ruiz Soto into the Democratic Party (PD) in December.^[10][11][12]

Concurrently, following the electoral defeat in the Basque regional election held in November that same year, Manuel Fraga resigned as AP leader on 1 December, being replaced by Antonio Hernández Mancha—until then the leader of the party in Andalusia—on 7 February.^[13] However, by the time of Mancha's election his party's parliamentary group in the Congress of Deputies had been reduced to 67 members out of the 105 that the People's Coalition had secured in the 1986 election.^[14] Additionally, Hernandez Mancha was not a deputy but a senator. This meant that he was unable to engage Felipe Gonzalez directly during debates, limiting this ability to reach out to the general public as leader of the opposition.^[15][16] Finally, Fraga's resignation had prompted former prime minister Adolfo Suárez and his Democratic and Social Centre (CDS) party to attempt an electoral expansion at the expense of AP in the upcoming 1987 local, regional and European Parliament elections, ultimately envisaging the former overcoming the latter as the main opposition party in Spain.^[14]

The Spanish Constitution of 1978 required for motions of no confidence to be proposed by at least one-tenth of the Congress of Deputies—35 out of 350. Following the German model, votes of no confidence in Spain were constructive, so the motion was required to include an alternative candidate for prime minister.^[17][18] For a motion of no confidence to be successful, it had to be passed by an absolute majority in the Congress of Deputies. A minimum period of five days from the motion's registration (dubbed as "cooling period") was required to pass before it could come up for a vote, but no maximum was established. Other parties were entitled to submit alternative motions within the first two days from the registration.^[19][20]

1. The Congress of Deputies may challenge Government policy by passing a motion of censure by an absolute majority of its members.
2. The motion of censure must be proposed by at least one tenth of the Deputies, including a candidate for the office of President of the Government.
3. The motion of censure may not be voted on until five days after it has been submitted. During the first two days of this period, alternative motions may be submitted.
4. If the motion of censure is not passed by the Congress, its signatories may not submit another during the same session.

— Article 113 of the Spanish Constitution^[21]

Concurrently, the Prime Minister was barred from dissolving the Cortes Generales and calling a general election while a motion of no confidence was pending. If the motion was successful, the incumbent prime minister and their government were required to submit their resignation to the Monarch, while the candidate proposed in the motion was automatically considered to have the confidence of the Congress of Deputies and immediately appointed as prime minister. If unsuccessful, the signatories of the motion were barred from submitting another during the same session.^[20][21]

The procedure for motions of no confidence was regulated within Articles 175 to 179 of the Standing Orders of the Congress of Deputies, which provided for the debate on the motion starting with its defence by one of the signatory members without any time limitations, to be followed by an also time-unlimited speech by the nominated candidate to explain their political programme. Subsequently, spokespeople from the different parliamentary groups in Congress were allowed to speak for thirty minutes, with an opportunity to reply or rectify themselves for ten minutes. Members of the government were allowed to take the floor and speak at any time of their request during the debate.^[22]

Antonio Hernández Mancha regarded the motion and the vote as a success in "consolidating [AP] as the sole alternative of government",^[42][43] not ruling out the proposal of future, similar motions.^[34] However, the motion's opportunity, Mancha's lackluster performance in the debate and his oversized defeat—including the refusal from AP's erstwhile allies (PDP and PL) or that of its split members (RD and PD) to back him—would go down in history as a massive political blunder that, ultimately, would cost him his political career.^[44][45]

A number of factors were said to contribute to Hernández Mancha's failing to secure any political gain from the debate. Firstly, that he was a newcomer to national politics—having been appointed as AP leader barely two months earlier—coupled with the fact that the ruling PSOE rushed the debate on the motion to the earliest possible date allowed under law, which meant that Mancha had little time to prepare himself against the well-experienced Felipe González and Alfonso Guerra.^[17][46] Secondly, the prime minister's choice not to intervene until the second day of debating further weakened Mancha's ability to stage the parliamentary duel he sought, with his speech being mostly panned by the spokespeople of other minor parties.^[47] From that point, movements were set in motion within his party to replace him as leader, ultimately seeing Manuel Fraga forcing him out of politics in January 1989 and prompting the refoundation of AP—together with the PDP and PL—into the People's Party (PP) that same month.^[48][49][50]

A different interpretation of the motion's consequences was that it was partly successful in allowing AP to recover the political initiative ahead of the June 1987 local and regional elections, where the party held out as the main opposition force in Spain despite the electoral growth of the CDS. Later on, Hernández Mancha would reveal that he had not tabled the motion against González, but against Suárez, weary that the right-wing electorate could succumb to tactical voting in favour of the latter—much more widely known and popular than himself—as a result of the political vacuum left by Fraga's resignation.^[51] In any case, the 1987 motion has come to go down in the recent history of Spain in contraposition to the 1980 one, as the exemplification of the political risks than an ill-fated vote of no confidence can entail for the candidate tabling it.^[48][52]