Orense, Spain, 1940, just after the end of the Civil War. Every time Elena locks the door of her home, she and her children become the faithful guardians of a sacred secret: Ricardo, her husband, their father, hides in the house, trying to avoid the brutal political persecution of the victors, who hunt, as if they were wild animals, and imprison or execute, those who have lost the bloody and tragic struggle…
With a prestigious job and a loving family, Emilio (José Coronado) has the kind of life someone would kill for. But beneath it all is a horrible lie. Emilio's wife, Ágata (Adriana Ozores), becomes suspicious when Emilio picks up a guest pass to enter the Bank of Spain -- where, ostensibly, he works as an economist. But the house of cards starts crashing down when Emilio meets a needy college student, Rosana (Marta Etura), and begins an affair that proves disastrous.
Palencia, Spain, late 1990s. While Gema and Toribio, who live in their own cloud of precarious happiness, always smile stupidly as if they have to apologize for something they have not actually done, their little son Martín suffers, every day at school, an unbearable ordeal, tragic but also comical, that they, a peer of daydreaming simpletons, are unaware of.