Summary: The concept of rural development in the European Union has evolved from a predominantly economic process, the result of a vision of rural productivity, to find a new way of looking at rural development based on models of participation and social partnership-type active. This thesis examines the case of Los Ancares region in the province of Leon, which implemented a number of local development programs, which include the LEADER initiative. The overall objective of the research is, bring thoughts about rural development endogenous. This is contributing to the analysis of some elements that drive local development in certain areas, such as networking, the networking innovation and harnessing the endogenous resources of the territory, as well as the assumptions that facilitate its emergence , or the identification of the main obstacles to its dissemination. Social capital has been analyzed using the approximation that does Woolcock (
1998). Moreover, the study of the topography of the network, which could be identified in the investigation was conducted with the techniques of network analysis, and included indicators such as measures of centrality, degree of intermediation and closeness, and was conducted with programs UCINET ® 6 and NetDraw ® 1. The results show that there is a strong sense of local identity and reveal that the LEADER program has played an important role in the formation of social capital in the region. It has also identified the existence of a network of local partnerships in the agro-food sector, comprising public and private institutions, whose morphology, despite showing a relatively low density and a high dependence on the public sector, presents positive features of solidity and continuity in communication, activity and proximity.
