Results of the joint reading of the Windmills of the Region of Murcia and their context

The use of GIS tools in the preparation of the Master Plan for the Region of Murcia’s Windmills has facilitated the documentation work, study and analysis of the complex context in which these heritage elements are inserted, considered B.I.C. (Bien de Interés Cultural - Asset of Cultural Interest) with monument category and therefore subject to unique protection and tutelage. The GIS analysis allows the integration of information from different sources that respond, among others, to variables such as the territorial variables that link the windmills to a system of corridors of cattle trails and wadis; those of a productive nature associated with their own functionality in milling processes or water extraction in agricultural and salt exploitation processes, etc.; those related to landscape values and their impact on the construction and characterisation of the different landscapes. In this way, a model is generated which, by combining or discriminating the different variables, makes it possible to specify relationships between individual elements, identify settlement patterns or recognise singularities. The joint vision of all these aspects enables a reading beyond the current situation of the windmills as isolated pieces subject to recovery as unique elements of the landscape, but also enables a different way of thinking about the windmill complex, as a whole, as a system. Nodes in an ecosystemic network or, in other words, elements that can become part of a large green network as cultural services associated with nature.