The Spanish agricultural sector crisis is intimately related to the weak position of local producers in the value chain. In order to analyse this issue, we will use a model that describes the post-industrial economy value creation process, and the role played by immaterial resources as a structural variable in that process. Collective strategies, like the creation of product designations of origin or the constitution of producers’ organizations, are meant to halt resource rent appropriations by economic actors at the value chain's most concentrated stages. However, they have not performed well, thus giving rise to a debate on new models for the social construction of food quality. Despite their differences, the two cases analysed herein show the need to qualitatively transform the mediators of that social construction, taking into account the economic and institutional context of Spanish rural areas.
