SUMMARY
The debate on how to define when a city is intermediate stands still in force; while many studies explore the intermediation role of these cities in urban systems, the most widespread criterion for defining them is still their demographic size. This article seeks to enrich the debate around the role of intermediate cities based on the daily mobility practices observed in two cities that are home to less than 50.000 inhabitants in the Department of La Libertad, in northern Peru and which according to numerous classifications would not reach intermediate city status. As a research methodology, opinion surveys were combined with ethnographic records and cartographic analyses.The study allows to observe how these populations need regular trips to larger cities but also to regional villages. In the same way these cities become important service centers for a population that is scattered in small villages within a rugged territory and diverse. Mobility practices also allowed us to identify the importance of weekly temporality above the daily one to understand daily life in these cities, making Sunday fairs visible as important centralities of the activity Urban. With these results it is possible to maintain, by the observed day-to-day mobility, that these cities, despite their smaller size, fulfil intermediate city roles with territorial responsibility that public policy and the allocation of State resources cannot ignore.