Madrid is quite unique:
• No river
• Very recent
• Tiny when it became a capital
So why?
These are the rivers of other big European cities & capitals: huge and calm. Why?
Because rivers allowed:
• Drinking
• Irrigation ➡️ food ➡️ population
• Trade: Transport is much cheaper than on roads, so much more trade and wealth
You can see the importance of rivers by the population density in France: it follows the course of rivers! You can tell the confluence of big rivers because they host the biggest population centers—natural markets to trade across the meeting rivers
Compare with Madrid's main river
Do you know its name? No, because it's puny
It's weak. An affront on capital rivers. A feeble stream
Low bridges. Full of sandbars. Why? No point in clearing them. The only thing that navigates the Manzanares is its inferiority complex
If Madrid had been blessed with a huge river, it would have been a huge city in ancient times. But no. In fact, it's a very recent city
Compare its founding with that of other capitals of countries occupied by the Romans. Most are 2k+ y old. Madrid? Barely 1k y old
When it was selected as capital, it wasn't the 1st, or the 2nd, or even the 3rd biggest city in Spain. It was the 10th! Barely over 10k people. A small town!
Back then, most capitals were the biggest, most powerful, best placed city. Why not in Spain?
Blame this guy
Philip II of Spain—who also gave name to the Philippines. Until the 1560s, Spain had an itinerant court. He wanted to fix it in a city. Where?
He had to deal with 2 realities. One was his empire: He needed a capital that was close enough to everything. That was Spain, which was also among the richest parts of his empire.
So he wanted a capital in Spain
This is Spain
What do you notice?
It's criss-crossed with mountain ranges. This has serious consequences
• Spain has a lot of rivers separated from each other by these mountain ranges. This means they're smaller than its Northern Europe equivalents
• Because they go through all these mountains, they aren't navigable*. They couldn't be used much for trade
So no big central city
It also means there are few plains. The few on the coast all developed big populations since Roman times. Barcelona, Valencia, Huelva, Cadiz... All predate the Roman!
This means Spain was (and is) made of islands of coastal population separated by mountains
Another thing to notice: It's surrounded by coasts, but each coast had its own pbms:
• Mediterranean: Deal with the colonies in Italy / Greece and fend off Muslim attacks
• Southwest: Deal with Spain's American colonies
• North: Deal with British attacks & Flemish colonies
Then there are the 2 central plateaux ("mesetas") and the Ebro Valley.
The king had to find a place that connected them all as best as possible.
I mentioned before the king had an itinerant court until then. This was the reason: Too many disconnected power centers
So what was the best connected place in the country at the time?
The red areas in the map below. Noticve they include Madrid and Toledo—which was one of the biggest and most powerful cities at the time.
So why not Toledo as a capital?
This is Toledo. Majestic, on a hill surrounded by the Tajo river
But:
• Streets are small, which is not ideal for travel with your court—and your personal guard
• You can’t grow the city much further
• You can’t determine its urbanism
And Philip II wanted to build. He had visited his Italian and Flemish possessions and wanted to bring its architecture. This is why he built the Escorial Palace
He wanted to do the same with his new capital
Madrid had another benefit: It had a power void.
Toledo and Valladolid had noble and religious leaders who could challenge the king
Not Madrid, which was smaller and had recently lost many nobles due to a failed revolt.
The king had confiscated their lands in Madrid
Madrid had other small benefits:
• Built on a defensible position
• Reliable water from the mountain range
• Air from the mountains (back then, they thought they were the cure against recurring epidemics)
• Forests for hunting
So Philip II chose Madrid in 1561
Once capital, the entire communications network had to be rewired to make Madrid more central. That was the point of the capital after all—allow easy access to all the territory.
Notice how so many Roman road paths have been conserved, but the central part is completely new
This happened over the centuries
More recently, we can see the roads plan of 1926, the highways plan of 1985, the current railroads... Most cross in Madrid
The goal of Madrid's airport was to do the same connecting Spain with the world. It's now the 5th busiest airport in Europe
So Madrid is unique, because its geography had very little to offer—except it was central
But that centrality made it a capital
That centrality gave it infrastructure
That infrastructure made it the most connected place in Spain, hence the biggest market, hence the biggest city
If you want to know more, I have an upcoming article on Madrid. Sign up to the free newsletter to receive it.
And follow me for more threads like that! One every week/month unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/subscribe
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Why did 🇮🇱Israel strike 🇮🇷Iran now, and not months or years ago or in the future?
A unique combination of a dozen factors converged to make the moment unique for 🇮🇱Israel: 🧵 1. No Hamas to its southwest 2. No Hezbollah to its north 3. No Assad threat to the northeast
4...
4. No more Syrian army to attack 🇮🇱Israel's planes: As the new forces of HTS took over Syria, Israel bombed all the existing Syrian military. No more fighter jets or surface-to-air missiles to threaten 🇮🇱Israel
5. Ability to fly over Syria to refuel
This is critical, because 🇮🇷Iran is ~600-1000 miles away from 🇮🇱Israel, so 1200-2000 miles round trip
The range of Israel’s stealth F35 is only about 1,350 mi
To operate inside 🇮🇷Iran, 🇮🇱Israel needed refueling over Syria
1. From Feb 2025 to Jun 2025, it increased its amount of enriched uranium by 50% 2. It now had 400kg of highly enriched uranium, enough for 9-10 bombs 3. This is 60% enriched uranium. Fuel only requires 5% enrichment.
4... 🧵
4. It's easy to go from 60% to 90% (weapons grade), it only takes weeks 5. The only country on Earth with such enriched uranium and without a bomb is 🇮🇷Iran 6. The IAEA (nuclear watchdog) found 3 secret nuclear sites
7. When 🇮🇷Iran didn't respond to this accusation, the IAEA censured it 8. 🇮🇷Iran responded to the censoring by saying it would open a 3rd enrichment site in a secret spot
Now that the 🇺🇸US has bombed 3 of 🇮🇷Iran's nuclear sites, where will the war go from here?
It depends on 🇮🇱Israel: 🧵
🇮🇷Iran never wanted the war, and its forces are being decimated. Its ability to send missiles to 🇮🇱Israel is being degraded every day. If it could sign a ceasefire while saving face, it would
Meanwhile, 🇮🇱Israel has kept striking Iran non stop. Its daily airstrikes didn't go down substantially in the first few days. Its ability to keep striking 🇮🇷Iran remains unabated
Can there be an invasion of Iran? Hardly. Two maps explain why, and also why Iran is the way it is today, whether its regime will fall, what other superpowers will do, and in general why Iran is the way it is today
The only truly exposed area is the southwestern corner of Khuzestan, which is a swamp
The biggest superpowers lie to the west, and there the very broad Zagros make it really hard to conquer Iran. The mountain range is tall and wide, making logistics similar to Afghanistan. Very hard.
Iraq learned it the hard way when it tried to attack there in 1980
Listening to the debate, it looks like 🇮🇱Israel & the 🇺🇸US intelligence community disagreed, but that's not really the case!
Both thought Iran was weeks to months away from being able to develop the bomb
So what's the disagreement?
Here are more facts:
• Tehran had just announced a 3rd enrichment site in an undisclosed place
• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had recently produced a report censoring Iran for the 1st time in 20y
• It accused Iran of 3 undisclosed nuclear sites
• It claimed Iran had enough enriched uranium for 9-10 nuclear bombs
• All the other countries in the world who have enriched uranium at the same level also have nuclear weapons. Iran is the only country that doesn't have these weapons yet enriches uranium as much
Nuclear is the best source of energy across nearly all the factors that matter. It's the safest, cleanest, densest, most sustainable, geopolitically stable, predictable, dispatchable, and can be cheap.
1. SAFEST
It kills 1000x less than coal
Living close to a nuclear power plant for one year gives you less radiation than eating a banana (graph is logarithmic)
2. CLEANEST
Accounting for all the lifecycle of all energies, it's the one that emits the least CO2