The document discusses the history of windmills used for pumping water in Mallorca. It describes how different types of windmills were introduced over the 19th and 20th centuries to drain wetlands and enable irrigation-based agriculture. By the mid-20th century, over 2,500 water pumping windmills had been built across Mallorca, transforming the landscape and economy before later being replaced by engines.

1. PUMPING WINDMILLS IN MALLORCA
➢The windmills were already part of the landscape of Mallorca during
the 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” or
bouquet mills (1854) and, finally, the wheel mills.
Wheel Mill

2. Bouquet Mill (molí de ramell)
➢In 1845, the Dutch engineer Paul Bouvij introduced in Mallorca the
first modern mill to accelerate the drying of wetlands in Sant Jordi
meadows.
➢By drying these wetlands they wanted to finish with the mosquitoes
that were causing epidemics in the capital (Palma).

3. ➢At the end of the 19th century and during the first half of the
20th century, the mills invaded the landscape of the three low areas
and wetlands in Mallorca: Prat de Sant Jordi, to the South-West.
Campos and Ses Salines, to the South-East. And Sa Pobla-Muro, to
the North.
➢In the three areas, a rich irrigated agriculture, made possible by
water mills, replaced the traditional unirrigated agriculture.
➢From 1934, the wheel mill, more efficient, gradually replaced the
other mills and became the most widely seen mills in the Mallorcan
countryside.
➢ Irrigated Agriculture
Unirrigated Agriculture

4. ➢In Campos, and thanks to water mills, cows became the main source
of 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 no
longer 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, 700
are in our area, the villages of Campos (629) and Ses Salines (92)
➢In 2001, the Ministry of Environment of Spain, with the
collaboration of the Municipality of Campos and an electric company,
launched a project to restructure the water mills to produce
electricity.