We will analyse the role played by Galician villages, county towns or small cities as coordinating centers of the rural environment. These places are regarded as a necessary connection between rural and urban life. They are urban nuclei which provide an urban base, as well as services, to the entire territory. In a territorial system such as the one in Galicia, with a bipolarity between an urban-industrial coastal subsystem and an agrarian-traditional inland one -with lower densities, negative demographic growth and an increasingly aging population-, these settlements are of great relevance. At an economic level, primary sector activities are still important, and secondary and tertiary sector activities tend to be concentrated in large cities and in the network of small cities that make up the urban system.

This work will study: 1) The role of villages and small cities as regional market places, which are now revived with new ecological produce or with geographical denominations of origin from nearby areas. This function represents a modern continuity of the old fairs and periodic markets that were studied fifty years ago; 2) The location of small and medium-sized processing and packaging companies of high quality agricultural produce as well as their leading role in the Galician agri-food sector; 3) The image of an agrarian-based region that these villages or small cities project, which serve as the link between the rural areas of the region and their urban systems.