Restoration and rehabilitation of the tide mill El Caño is encompassed in the operations carried out by the Coastal General Direction, aimed at restoring the historical and industrial heritage of the tide mill El Caño, located in Puerto de Santa María at the mouth of the river Guadalete. The location of tide mills in the Bay of Cádiz is intrinsically connected to the configuration of the environment. Intertidal mudflats, salt lakes and marshlands form a mosaic of marshes and channels along which tides water flows. The land is composed of sediments deposited by the river Guadalete. The edifications that constitute the tide mill’s original floor plan are located along the right bank of the marshlands and on them.

They may be divided into two big areas. The first area encompasses the original floor plan, consisting of two floors and corresponding to the tide mill as such. The west area corresponds in turn to the adjacent building, devoted to auxiliary facilities (i.e. flour classification, stables). The second big area consists of a newly built industrial unit serving as an extension of the original tide mill and a warehouse erected on the plot, traditionally devoted to the garden. Due to the significant deteriorations and the need for operations executed in the past to be corrected, it was required to plan and develop a series of complex and varied operations comprising several fields of knowledge in order to diagnose the problem and prescribe an adequate solution.

Preliminary works encompassed in the restoration project were the following:

• Wind mill description from an architectural and historical approach.
• Damages survey and monitoring.
• Masonry petrography and mechanical characterization.
• Planimetric survey.
• Diagnosis and technical opinion of decay and mechanical failure processes.
• Determination of actions needed for the functional recovery of the tidemill.
• Machinery restoration.
• Establishment of complementary actions needed for the tidemill restoration. Accesses, dissemination and register.
• Final project drafting and works management.