From Invertebrate Spain by José Ortega y Gasset:

It is well known that a region’s humidity is determined not by the absolute quantity of water it receives, but by the proportion between what it receives and what it gives back by way of humidity. In Castile there is four times as much evaporation as there is rain. If we translate this figure into terms of the imagination, we get the grotesque picture of a country where more water goes from the earth to the clouds than comes from the clouds to the earth. In Castile it must rain upwards.