Exit: Spain’s Windmills

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 144, 19 June 1936, Page 9

Exit: Spain’s Windmills

The windmills of La Mancha, Spain, which proved too sturdy for Dou Quixote’s lance, are falling at last orc by one. Only three are left, in the village of Criptana, and these have bin few days left to them. Passing through the village of white cottages, one comes upon these threehuge structures, their sails turning slowly and unceasingly, as if trying t<. ward off an unfriendly approach, and s view from immediately beneath shows that they have all that dignity and grace which is required of them as th* last of their race. The millers are regretful. They pay that in the last years the windmills have been disappearing, and the tradi tion, carried on for so many centuries in the families, must now disappear.

In the village lives “El CarretO' rillo,” the last builder of whose fame extends all over southern Spain. He, too, is regretful and without l-ope. The mills are out of date. No oue, it appears, will ever want another one built. To-day the only people interested are tourists and painters, and no one builds windmills for them. Inside, the buildings consist of thre<t floors. The first two are spotlessly clean; living apartments, and above is the mill itself. Here are two heavy mil!< stones, rotated with levers of timber by the force of the great sails The round turret roof turns with the sails to catch the direction of the wind f ' ;<nd the whole simple machine vear in and year out without a hitch <>l4 overhaul. But this, ns the miller cxw plains with a sigh, is all out of date. J