Amós is a sailor and owner of a ship. He is impatient with the arrival of his uncle who returns from the Soviet Union, after having exiled there after the Civil War. They have no time to meet because the old man unexpectedly dies. Amos knows, thanks to the letters his mother received, that his uncle had a treasure. However, this one is not among the objects that were in the old man's room.

In 1939, Ramón was a young man, caught up in his Barcelona family's involvement on the Republic side in the brutal Spanish Civil War. He and his family fled into exile ahead of Franco's troops. Now it is many years later, and he has come back to see how his old homestead fared in the intervening years. The only person he can find who is able to remember those years clearly is his family's old butler Claudio.