Tilting at windmills Cervantes wrote and published "Don Quixote" during the Eighty Years' War, or Dutch War of Independence (1568–1648), a revolt by the Habsburg Netherlands to end Spanish rule. In "Don Quixote", the eponymous protagonist consistently misinterprets the motives and actions of his adversaries and allies, and struggles to even understand his own at times — a conundrum regularly resulting in apparently unjustified violent actions and consequences. One way of interpreting Don Quixote's tilting at windmills could be allegorically, thereby promoting critical, skeptical, or satirical evaluation of either a hero's motives, rationales and actions, or the ultimate aims of a nation's foreign
The Windmills of Your Mind feat matched by Springfield's third subsequent single "Brand New Me" which therefore ties with "The Windmills" as having afforded Springfield her best-ever solo showing on a "Billboard" chart. "The Windmills of Your Mind" was recorded by José Feliciano for his 1969 album "10 to 23", and Feliciano performed the song on the Academy Awards ceremony broadcast of 14 April 1969; the song's original singer Noel Harrison would later opine of Feliciano's performance: "A wonderful musician and compelling singer, he made much too free with the beautiful melody in my humble opinion. But that's jazz." It was Feliciano's version of "The