“Local Action Groups” as a tool for facing depopulation in rural Spain

Local Action Groups consist of networks of interaction between local authorities and societal actors in rural areas financed by the EU LEADER program. They are set to design and implement in a participatory way development strategies for the territories where they operate. With own data from questionnaires and interviews conducted to actors in a sample of these networks, the paper will analyse the functioning, relevance and autonomy of these networks in Spain and the extent to which they serve as an effective policy tool to face the problem of depopulation of rural areas in the country.