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The Roses Citadel is a bastioned fortification that has archaeological remains from the Greek, Roman and medieval periods in its interior. Currently, the area inside the Citadel is used for a wide range of activities; some directly related with the heritage item, others associated with its use as a public space for the town. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the economic interest of charging an entrance fee vs the alternative of free access and offers a framework to address this issue.

The proposal is to consider the marginal cost of increasing the number of users and to carry out a travel cost analysis. It is vital to take into account the results of specifically economic analyses, but the evaluations of social policies should also be considered, and should have a considerable weight in decision making.

It is proposed that free entry would bring about an increase in the number of visitors and users of Roses Citadel. In turn, this increase would lead to a greater social use of this heritage asset, and a chance for the least privileged sectors of society to use the site more. Financial resources for the maintenance of the asset would not be raised through entry fees, but through contributions relating to the increase in the social consideration of the site.

In the context of a discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of paying an entry fee for heritage assets, the example of Roses Citadel provides several factors for consideration. It shows that payment of an entry fee affects use of the site by society, and particularly by the local community, whereas free access leads to a wide range of opportunities for use.

This introduction provides an overview of the discourse on alternative agrifood movements (AAMs) to (1) ascertain the degree of convergence and divergence around a common ethos of alterity and (2) context the chapters of the book. AAMs have increased in recent years in response to the growing legitimation crisis of the conventional agrifood system. Some agrifood researchers argue that AAMs represent the vanguard movement of our time, a formidable counter movement to global capitalism. Other authors note a pattern of blunting of the transformative qualities of AAMs due to conventionalization and mainstreaming in the market. The literature on AAMs is organized following a Four Questions in Agrifood Studies (Constance, 2008) framework. The section for each Question ends with a case study to better illustrate the historical dynamics of an AAM. The literature review ends with a summary of the discourse applied to the research question of the book: Are AAMs the vanguard social movement of our time? The last section of this introduction provides a short description of each contributing chapter of the book, which is divided into five sections: Introduction; Theoretical and Conceptual Framings; Food Sovereignty Movements; Alternative Movements in the Global North; and Conclusions.