Juan flees Madrid and an incestuous relationship with his sister, Ana, working at a mine on the Andalucian coast. When his friendship with Rosario, a local shop girl, becomes romance, Ana shows up wanting to rekindle their affair. He resists at first, but she stays, asserting that Juan is the only man she can ever love. Juan distances himself from Rosario. The mine has problems: high cancer rates in the area caused by poorly stored radioactive waste. A foreign safety engineer, Petersen, tries to connect with Ana, is rebuffed, but lets her stay in his sea-front bungalow. Juan seeks her out to demand she leave, only to argue with Petersen. Death, desire, and longing play out.
German, a young theater director, tries to organize a theater play about Lulu, a prostitute that was killed in London by Jack the ripper. While looking for the protagonist, Rufo appears, an introvert jazz musician. He could play Jack the ripper.
Spain, 1973. Dictator Francisco Franco has ruled the country since 1939 with an iron fist; but he is now a very old and sick man. The future of the weakened regime is in danger. Admiral Carrero Blanco is his natural successor. The Basque terrorist gang ETA decides that he must die to prevent the dictatorship from continuing.
Juan, before the economic problems arising as a result of the arrival of democracy in Spain, decides to go to Venezuela, with Jaime, his brother, who has made his fortune in that country. Juan hopes that Jaime will make him a loan, hoping that also Gloria, his daughte,r marries Isidro Gomez de Ansúrez, a boy from a wealthy family.
In 1940, in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, a young girl living on the Castilian plain is haunted after attending a screening of James Whale's 1931 film Frankenstein and hearing from her sister that the monster is not dead, instead existing as a spirit inhabiting a nearby barn.
A former convict, named Raul Vela, and a cabaret singer, called Clara, are a couple who tries to lead a normal life. He has found an employment and she wants to leave the cabaret. One day an old chief, who wants to disappear, proposes him to justify his supposed death in a supposed accident. In exchange, Raúl will receive one hundred thousand pesetas as gratification. Raul refuses to engage in the deception. Shortly after, he reads in a newspaper about the death of Cervera, which makes the police relate him to the case.
Carlos a young man who lives in the suburbs of the big city has ambitions and wants to change his life. Influenced by friends of doubtful moral character, habituated to frequent harmful environments. Little by little, he begins to see himself doomed to crime and one day he abandons his girlfriend, María, for Isabel, an attractive and intelligent woman who plays with him and takes him wherever he wants. When Carlos, once he has committed a robbery, realizes the nature of Isabel and his friends, and that he will never be happy in that environment, he tries to go back, but the violence of the facts will lead him to a bloodthirsty outcome.
Rosario was unjustly condemned for a robbery committed in the theater where she worked as secretary of producer Gaston Leducq. When she leaves prison, she tries to prove her innocence to Gaston, but things do not happen as she expected.
A French National Treasury van is assaulted and they steal the gold bullion it was carrying. According to confidences received by the Police Headquarters of Barcelona, it seems that part of the gold is clandestinely introduced into Spain through the Pyrenees. In order to discover and eradicate such smuggling infiltration, an agent pretends to be a day laborer at a farm located on the border and in a suspicious area.