Es Jonquet

The row is called Molinar de Ponent, the western mill district. Between the 17th and 18th centuries, part of the neighbourhood was divided into plots and seven grain mills were built. The position was ideal: dependable wind on the spur, with grain arriving at the harbour directly below.

Five remain: Molí d’en Garleta, Molí del Nom de Déu, Molí d’en Carreres, Molí de sa Garriguera and Molí d’en Celos.

These were grain mills, not water-pumping windmills. The latter, familiar from fields across the Pla, raised water; these ground grain.

The best known takes its name from the nickname of its last milling family. The family line is documented from 1881 and ended with Gaspar Flexes i Balaguer, known as Garleta. In 1993, the city bought the mill from him and restored it.

It now contains the small Museu dels Molins, explaining how the sails were covered, how power reached the millstones and how finely the flour was ground.

Conservation remains important: in 2025, the city and Consell de Mallorca agreed on further restoration of Garleta. The neighbourhood, including the mills, is protected as a Conjunt històric, a historic ensemble.

Between and below the mills are a handful of 19th-century single-storey houses once occupied by fishermen, millers and dock workers. Narrow lanes, cobbles, no front gardens: the houses sit directly on the rock.

In the 1960s and 1970s, demolition to make way for high-rises was proposed. Its survival was far from certain. This is the last remnant of this kind of housing beside Palma’s harbour.