1. PUMPING WINDMILLS IN MALLORCA The windmills were already part of the landscape of Mallorca duringthe Muslim period, before the Catalan conquest (1229). There are windmills to make flour ... and windmills to draw water! The boom of Water Pumping Windmills occurred between mid-nineteenth century and 1960: the first mills were latin sail mills(XVIII century); later on, there came the mills de ramell orbouquet mills (1854) and, finally, the wheel mills.Wheel Mill

2. Bouquet Mill (mol de ramell)In 1845, the Dutch engineer Paul Bouvij introduced in Mallorca thefirst modern mill to accelerate the drying of wetlands in Sant Jordimeadows. By drying these wetlands they wanted to finish with the mosquitoesthat were causing epidemics in the capital (Palma). 3. At the end of the 19th century and during the first half of the20th century, the mills invaded the landscape of the three low areasand wetlands in Mallorca: Prat de Sant Jordi, to the South-West.Campos and Ses Salines, to the South-East. And Sa Pobla-Muro, tothe North.In the three areas, a rich irrigated agriculture, made possible bywater mills, replaced the traditional unirrigated agriculture.From 1934, the wheel mill, more efficient, gradually replaced theother mills and became the most widely seen mills in the Mallorcancountryside.Irrigated Agriculture Unirrigated Agriculture 4. In Campos, and thanks to water mills, cows became the main sourceof wealth during a good part of the XXth century. In 1960, the replacement of mills for engines caused an over-exploitation of aquifers. As a result, water became salty and was nolonger suitable for irrigation.In the 1980s a number of factors such as water salinization,Spain's entry in the European Union, the growth of tourism ...contributed to the abandonment of the countryside, while the mills,which once led to richness, fade more and more.Currently, Mallorca has cataloged 2,502 watermills. Of these, 700are in our area, the villages of Campos (629) and Ses Salines (92)In 2001, the Ministry of Environment of Spain, with thecollaboration of the Municipality of Campos and an electric company,launched a project to restructure the water mills to produceelectricity.