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To preserve agroforest landscapes, it is essential to understand the complex factors that have shaped them. Biophysical and socio-economic factors need to be considered, and we must leverage the ever-increasing human capacity to model landscapes and predict their responses to agricultural intensification and land abandonment. This paper presents the main conclusions of a study on stakeholder perceptions of landscape changes in two protected Mediterranean mountain areas in the Iberian Peninsula: Alta Garrotxa and Gavarres. First, we present the changes in land use and land covers that have occurred over the past half-century. Then, we used in-depth interviews to determine the social perceptions and assessments of the landscape changes. We identified two coexisting but opposing viewpoints based on anthropocentric and ecocentric interpretations. The results reveal the complexity and diversity of stakeholder assessments of current management models and illustrated the lack of consensus on land management priorities. Therefore, it is necessary to promote participative methods and incorporate environmental service assessment as key elements in the decision-making processes. Copyright (C) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.