From Ramon Y Poem by Morgan Michaels

Like Rome, Madrid lay at center of a vast plain ringed in the distance by snow-capped mountains. It was chosen as the new capital by old King Phillip, maybe because his knees objected to the steeper hillsides of Toledo, or, likelier, because he imagined centrism helpful in ruling a far-flung kingdom like his own. That so, he was right, it did, though Ferdinand and his wife, the Spanish royals known best to us, ruled quite cheerfully from Seville. Remember the tale of Isabella pawning her jewels to bankroll Columbus? She wasn't so stupid. Anyway, traveling to Madrid, you sensed yourself to be going from from Past to Present and it gave the rider who viewed the passing countryside a sense of the change wrought by Time. League upon league the horses hooves covered and cast behind and it was a charmed landscape the three beheld (the fat man momentarily waking) dotted with windmills, castle ruins and villages nestled beneath church steeples.