Windmills of Jávea

The remaining ruins of the former wheat mills still bear witness to the time when agriculture was of greater importance in the region. Some of them are now privately owned.
It is not known exactly when the mills were built. The last reference to the company probably dates back to 1911.

The circuit from the harbor to the mills (the climb through the green) past the mills to the lighthouse and then down the mountain back into the harbor is very beautiful.

Nowadays they are actually just monuments to a long tradition of craftsmanship: the heavy millstones were moved solely using the power of the wind as driving energy and, for example, grains were ground into flour (grain mills) or oil was pressed from olive fruits (oil mills). Sometimes - although rarely - the windmills also had the function of a pumping station and transported water to a higher level.
But Miguel de CERVANTES (1547 to 1616) also set a literary monument to the technical monument of the Molinos: the most famous figure of the author, who is considered the national poet of Spain and whose work can certainly be valued as world literature: “Don QUIXOTE”, also known as “Knight “of the sad figure” and always accompanied by his loyal squire Sancho Panza, in one of the fictional stories he fights a - of course hopeless - battle against windmills in which he believes he recognizes four-armed giants.