The Patriotic Union (, UP) was a political party created by Spanish dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera, conceived to support his regime and consolidate the interests of political Catholics, technocrats, and the business-owning classes. The party's power was dependent upon the power of its founder and leader, rather than any popular mandate. Following the dismissal of Miguel Primo de Rivera in January 1930 by King Alfonso XIII, the party dissolved itself, and a small number of de Rivera loyalists regrouped under the banner of a new party called the National Monarchist Union.
Membership There is no reliable information on membership figures. The party review Unión Patriótica claimed in 1927 that there were 1,319,428 people on its rolls;Alejandro Quiroga, La llama de la pasión. La Unión Patriótica y la nacionalización de masas durante la dictadura de Primo de Rivera, [in:] Fernando Molina Aparicio (ed.), Extranjeros en el pasado. Nuevos historiadores de la España, Madrid 2009, , p. 261, James H. Rial, Revolution from Above: The Primo de Rivera Dictatorship in Spain, 1923–1930, London 1986, , p. 128 in 1928 the same source reported the figure as 1,696,304.Rose Martínez Segarra, La Unión Patriótica, [in:] Cuadernos constitucionales de la Cátedra Fadrique Furió Ceriol 1 (1992), p. 73, Quiroga 2009, p. 261 Most historians consider these figures fairly meaningless and suggest that they probably reflect creative bookkeeping on the part of regime bureaucrats, rather than the scale of genuine recruitment.see e.g. Shlomo Ben-Ami, El cirujano del hierro, Barcelona 2012, , pp. 134–135 Nonetheless, some scholars rely on some official figures from the time in specific local contexts, e.g. in the province of Almería the UP membership was estimated at 30,000,Pedro Martínez Gómez, La dictadura de Primo de Rivera en Almería (1923–1930). Entre el continuismo y la modernización, Almería 2007, , p. 323 and in mid-size Valencian towns like Gandia, Torrent or Utiel, at 500–1,000.Julio López Iñíguez, La Unión Patriótica y el Somatén Valencianos (1923–1930), Valencia 2007,
A personal communication from Primo de Rivera, dated 1929, estimated membership at 600–700,000.Quiroga 2009, p. 261 Many historians tend to suggest smaller total figures, ranging from 400,000J. L. Goméz Navarro, La U.P.: análisis de un partido en el poder, [in:] Estudios de Historia Social 32–34 (1955), p. 138 to 500,000.“Scarcely a third of that [official figure of 1,7m]” Stanley G. Payne, Fascism in Spain, 1923–1977, Madison 1999, , p. 29 These estimates are somewhat speculative, although some scholars have based their calculations on the circulation of the daily newspaper of the UP, La Nación, which at its peak reached 50,000 copies.Eduardo González Calleja, La España de Primo de Rivera. La modernización autoritaria 1923–1930, Madrid 2005, , pp. 192–193
Figures in the 1.3m–1.7m range claimed by the party would imply a membership rate of some 6–8% of the entire Spanish population, while figures in the 400–500,000 range suggested by later scholars would put membership at around 2%. In comparison to other comparable parties of European fascist regimes, in the mid-1930s some 10% of the Italian population were on the rolls of the PNF,some 4m out of 42m while in 1937 some 8% of Germans were members of the NSDAP.5,4m out of 69m By way of comparison, the official state parties of European communist countries in the late 20th century recorded membership rates between 4% in the USSRin 1957, Walter S. Hanchett, Some observations on membership figures of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, [in:] The American Political Science Review 52 (1958), p. 1125 and 8–10% in PolandWilliam B. Simons, Stephen White, The Party Statutes of the Communist World, Hague 1984, , p. 327 and Czechoslovakia.Jan Richter, Twenty-six years after the Velvet Revolution, [in:] Radio Praha 17.11.2005, available here In 1942, FET y de las JONS, the state party of the Francoist dictatorship, claimed around 900,000 members, or around 3% of the Spanish population.Stanley G. Payne, The Franco Regime, 1936–1975, Madison 2011, , p. 176
Notes