In this paper, the authors study the impacts of the globalization and restructuring processes over a sector, the tobacco industry, and a Region, Canary Islands, where this sector started up some factories. It is a case study to help to understand the regional effects of the globalization and the territorial restructuring processes, which they are discussing now. After the “fordism” crisis, the flexible specialization had given hopes to the less developed regions. Nevertheless, they are concerned about the impacts of the new technological possibilities. This is so, because, given the logic of the present international affairs, they can derive in the reproduction of the underdevelopment vicious circle. All over the world, the tobacco industry is suffering a restructuration process. While they do direct investment in non central localizations they close factories down and the employment is reduced in central areas. It would seem that this process would give some hopes to the less developed and non central regions, but author’s analysis reveals that the organized industries at a global level. With a world market and a strategy as the tobacco industry, do not generate virtuous circles in the backward regions. This is so because the globalization increases not only the oligopolization of the global market but also the concentration of the industry in some areas. Nevertheless, considering the possible dangerous effects of this process, the authors goes farther, and they tray to design strategic lines for the industrial policy, in order to get profit of the new circumstances, implanting a virtuous circle. In the first section, the main aspects of the global restructuration are introduced and its regional impacts are analyzed; immediately afterwards, the authors identify some “success conditions” that arises from the study of the some regional development experiences after the second world war. This section provide the background or the scenery to study the tobacco industry, whose characteristics and tendencies are described in the next section. Finally, some lines about the industrial policy are proposed for the less developed regions, that have toreact to this challenge.