A man's relationship with a bipolar woman becomes dangerous.

A grotesquely disfigured harpooner called Iguana is severely mistreated by his fellow sailors on a whaling ship in the 19th century. One night he escapes and takes up residence on a remote island. He makes himself ruler of the island and declares war on mankind. Anyone unfortunate enough to wind up on the island with Iguana is subjected to his cruel tyranny.

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.

Leandro, an unemployed mason and his friend, Tocho, attempt to rob a tobacconist in the Vallecas district of Madrid, but Mrs. Justa, the tobacconist, impedes it alerting the neighbors who notify police. Inside the shop, the confrontation between the two friends and their 'hostages', the tobacconist and her niece Angeles, is relaxing, and a budding sympathy arises between them.