Javier Lozano

April, 1940. Manolo, 16 years old, and Jesus, who is just 8, are taken by their older brother Pepe, a lieutenant in the Army, to a sanatorium for children suffering from tuberculosis, situated on the border with Portugal. Once in the sanatorium, Manolo, surrounded by boys all much younger than he is, feels a bit like the cock of the walk since the only other man around is the handyman Emilio who looks after the gardens and does whatever needs to be done about the place. His wife, Rafaela, is the cook. Manolo meets Irene, a falangist who runs the sanatorium, and the school teacher, Miss Transito, a crabby spinster. He has his first sexual experience, albeit as a voyeur, with his nurse Vicenta. When she has to leave, her place is taken by a girl from the village, Maria Jesus, with whom Manolo falls hopelessly in love. A relationship grows up between them which will mark them both for ever.

Paco, a truck driver who has always been dedicated to smuggling, hires Curro as an assistant, a young man wanting to make money without caring about the way to get it. The two drivers are surprised by an offer that far exceeds what they use to perceive: they have to transport illegal immigrants from Portugal to the French border.

Jorge nightmares in which he finds himself in a certain manor, where all day having sex. But who, and why - do not give burglars find two strong guarding the villa. It seems that young people want to save someone from there for some reason, but always gets kicked and wakes up in a cold sweat to in a moment go back to sleep ... And it all starts from the beginning.

Daniel, son of an important businessman, discovers a strong incestuous desire for his mother after a car accident in which his father dies. Feeling guilty about his father's death, he seeks refuge in the special affection and attraction he feels for his mother.

In Spain of the 1960s, a poor family of quinquis - a nomadic ethnic group with a tradition as old as that of the gypsises of Spain but with even more obscure origins - have a nomadic life marked by poverty. The son, Eleuterio Sánchez Rodriguez, nicknamed "El Lute", steals some chickens and is condemned to six months in jail. El Lute moves to the slum outskirts of Madrid with his common law wife, Chelo, starting an itinerant life as a peddler of pots and pans and living in a quinqui shantytown. He gradually embarks upon as life of petty criminality, eventually participating in the theft of a jewelry store during which a bystander is killed.

Librado, an unemployed man, lives in a crowded small house with numerous children and relatives, is beaten for stealing a car antenna. His godmother and her children try to settle in his place. She then is arrested at a supermarket for stealing, however, she offers herself and volunteers a friend of hers for sex to the policemen so she can be released. She is a maid of an employee who acts subservient to his boss, a mid-level government employee at once servile who delivers speeches on sexuality in educational texts and then discusses the matter with his brother, a corrupt inspector.

Like every night, Manuel remembers the old days of glory, when after the war he was a famous bullfighter. He and his friend Juan were the fashionable couple. Now Juan is a prominent businessman in bullfighting. But Manuel's feelings toward him have changed radically: an inexplicable hated seizes him when someone mentions his name. It has been more than twenty years since that afternoon, when Manuel was bullfighting and fell to the ground.