1We applied an intermediate disturbance-complexity approach to the land-use change of cultural 2 landscapes in the island of Mallorca from c. 1850 to the present, which accounts for the joint behaviour of 3 human appropriation of photosynthetic capacity used as a measure of disturbance, and a selection of land 4 metrics at different spatial scales that account for ecological functionality as a proxy of biodiversity. We 5 also delved deeper into local land-use changes in order to identify the main socioeconomic drivers and 6 ruling agencies at stake. A second degree polynomial regression was obtained linking socio-metabolic 7 disturbance and landscape ecological functioning (jointly assessing landscape patterns and processes).

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The colonization of Mallorca gave rise to a late-feudal agrarian society that evolved towards capitalism based on large estates owned by noblemen who hired large numbers of wage labourers from among smallholders living in agro-towns, the dispossessed remnants of a formerly wealthier peasantry. These well-off peasants originated from when the colonization frontier was open in the 13th and 14th centuries, but had been defeated when three peasant-plebeian revolts were crushed. Afterwards, Mallorca followed a latifundist transition towards agrarian capitalism similar to southern Italy or Spain, in sharp contrast with the middle-peasant paths seen in Catalonia or Valencia. The land rent rose, while agricultural wages fell from 1659 to 1800. Peasant families could not survive, and had to supplement wages with the products of their own plots. This set a socio-agroecological limit to growth in this agrarian class structure. The agrarian crisis at the end of the 19th century bankrupted the Mallorcan nobility. Bankers bought much of the land and sold it on as small allotments. This expanded the intensive cropping formerly limited to agro-town belts, giving rise to a new "peasantization". Despite their subordination, Mallorcan peasants had survived and created complex agroecological landscapes endowed with a rich biocultural heritage.

Mallorca keeps an age-old biocultural heritage embodied in their appealing landscapes, largely exploited as an intangible tourist asset. Although hotel and real estate investors ignore or despise the peasant families who still persevere in farming amidst this worldwide-known tourist hotspot, the Balearic Autonomous Government has recently started a pay-for-ecosystem-services scheme based on the tourist eco-tax collection that offers grants to farmers that keep the Majorcan cultural landscapes alive, while a growing number of them have turned organic. How has this peasant heritage survived within such a global tourist capitalist economy? We answer this question by explaining the socio-ecological transition experienced from the failure of agrarian capitalism in the island, and the ensuing peasantization process during the first half of the 20th century through a local banking-driven and market-oriented land reform. Then, the early tourist specialization during the second half of the 20th century and the spatial concentration of the Green Revolution only in certain areas of the island meant a deep marginalization of peasant farming. Ironically, only a smallholder peasantry could keep cultivating these sustenance-oriented marginal areas where traditional farming was partially maintained and is currently being reinvigorated by turning organic. Now the preservation of these biocultural landscapes, and the keeping of the ecosystem services it provides to Majorcan society, requires keeping this peasantry alive.

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