ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with changes affecting rurality in a Mediterranean context and the consequences of the continuous decline of farm predominance in the rural world. It examines the role of Spanish agriculture as part of a European 'Green Ring'. The chapter summarises the key role that the agrarian and peasant question has played in modern Spanish social research, and explains the main traits that have characterised Spanish agrarian society historically. It also considers the meaning of the castilian word campesino, and other equivalent terms used in other languages of the Spanish state for defining people working in agriculture and living in the country in different regions. The chapter defines and differentiates between the de-peasantisation and de-agrarianisation of rurality. It explores the significance of both processes and the way they affect the theoretical and methodological assumptions that have predominated in rural studies until now.
