What is the capital of Spain?

Madrid is unusual among European capitals in that it was chosen rather than grown into the role. Philip II fixed the court there in 1561, moving it from Toledo, and the logic was largely positional: Madrid sits near the geometric centre of the Iberian peninsula on the Castilian plateau, equidistant from the old rival kingdoms of Aragon, Castile, Andalusia and the north, and therefore neutral ground in a country assembled from separate crowns. It had no great port, no cathedral of note and no long imperial history at the time; the court made the city rather than the other way round. That origin still shows in the layout, with the royal palace, the great avenues and the Prado all products of deliberate state building, and in the surrounding geography, since Madrid sits high enough that its summers are fierce and its winters genuinely cold.

Distances on Spanish roads are measured from a marked point in the Puerta del Sol in central Madrid.