The Mills of La Plana
La Plana has always been one of the most magical and mysterious areas of Jávea. Many local children’s stories and unsolved mysteries surround this place, which is sheltered by the Montgó and on the mound of Cabo de San Antonio, with its many legends…
A supposed temple to Artemis, the holy caves where an ascetic founded an order, the ruins of a hermitage, the old monastery, the oldest discotheque on the peninsula, the houses with unlikely architecture, the hippies colonies, witches of yesterday and today, the chasm with many corpses from the war… All lead us to the idea that the Plana de San Jerónimo or Plana Justa, as it is really known, is a territory of telluric forces and heterogeneous mysticism. As if that were not enough, eleven windmills rise up high above, overlooking the valley with dignity, veiled by another windmill from the village.
The 12 mills of Jávea - 11 in La Plana and one in El Frechinal - are undoubtedly a clear witness to the time when Jávea was considered the wheat mill of Alicante. Nowadays flour is only found in supermarkets, and nothing remains of that liturgy of harvesting the wheat, grinding the grain and making the bread…
Of the mills in La Plana, the oldest dates from the 13th century, most are from the 18th century and the one in the town centre, the village mill, dates from the 19th century. They are built with rough stone and each brick is marked with symbol so that the construction can be erected in the easiest way. Like all the houses of the time, which were built with rough stone, they were painted with lime, acquiring the mythical white colour like the famous windmills of Don Quixote.
They were in operation until the beginning of the 20th century. The sultana trade and export had a lot to do with their disuse, as the area’s crops - grapes were replaced by wheat - to meet the demand, and with the rise of Jávea’s trade relations with the rest of the world for sultanas, cheaper wheat began to be imported from places as far away as the Arab and Baltic countries.
In the middle of the 20th century, the Mills were sold at public auction, as they had been owned by the state. At present some of them are in a state of total abandonment and ruin, many of them are privately owned and there have been rehabilitations of all kinds, even for housing. The most successful being the restorations carried out by the public administrations - the town council acquired three of them - providing the Mill with blades and ambient lighting.