Why doesn't the SELECT query select what it should select?

I have never experienced this before so I wonder what to look after in the code to solve it.

This is the code - which should work?

    $time = strtotime("-$a2 year", time());
$date = date("Y", $time);

$query = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE country='$country' AND state='$state'";

if(!empty($a2) && empty($a1)){
  $query .= " AND year<=";
  $query .= " '$date'";
  $query .= " AND day<=";
  $query .= " '$todayd'";
  $query .= " AND month<=";
  $query .= " '$todaym'";
 }
if(..){}
if(..){}
     $result = $query;

    $query = mysqli_query($con,"$result");

    while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($query))
    {
    .......

If I echo the string $query it shows:

SELECT * FROM users WHERE country='Spain' AND state='Madrid'

But the selected/shown users have all different kinds of countires and states

Why doesn't the SELECT query select what it should select?

I have never experienced this before so I wonder what to look after in the code to solve it.

This is the code - which should work?

$query = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE country='$country' AND state='$state'";
 $result = $query;

$query = mysqli_query($con,"$result");

while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($query))
{
.......

If I echo the string $query it shows:

SELECT * FROM users WHERE country='Spain' AND state='Madrid'

But the selected/shown users have all different kinds of countires and states