Hi! Have you been to Madrid the capital of Spain? 
Actually I have!  It was a good 30 years ago, though.  I can't say I recall it clearly.
30 years ago? Your travel history truly dates back,  The city has  almost 3.166 million inhabitant
I recall that it seemed much more metropolitan than the other cities in Spain where I visited.  Back then, it reminded me of New York City, but with fewer lights.
More so, the city lies on the River Manzanares in the centre of both the country and the Community of Madrid .
See, I don't even recall all that.  I guess the river was a draw to create the city.
History holds that the city fell to the Francoist armies on 28 March 1939.a civil war period
So I wonder how Spain got the city back.
History of Spain
The history of Spain dates back to the Middle Ages. In 1516, Habsburg Spain unified a number of disparate predecessor kingdoms; its modern form of a constitutional monarchy was introduced in 1813, and the current democratic constitution dates to 1978.
After the completion of the Reconquista, the Crown of Castile began to explore across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492, expanding into the New World and marking the beginning of the Golden Age under the Spanish Empire. The kingdoms of Spain were united under Habsburg rule in 1516
the book's opening has the narrator expressing an outlook that is typical to Murnane's writing:Twenty years ago, when I first arrived on the plains, I kept my eyes open. I looked for anything in the landscape that seemed to hint at some elaborate meaning behind appearances.My journey to the plains was much less arduous than I afterwards described it. And I cannot even say that at a certain hour I knew I had left Australia. But I recall clearly a succession of days when the flat land around