Sister Marina, a very unorthodox nun, is sent during the summer of 1994 to El Parral, a boarding school for boys threatened to be closed soon. Even though the kids welcome Marina with all kinds of pranks, they will, little by little, become something very close to the family they never had.

Three stories intertwined which occur in a single day. The day Ines discovers she is pregnant, Antonia decides to abandon her family and Marian realizes she is going to die.

Life for Adela, a single mom trying to raise her infant son, and Antonia, a widow with three daughters, are forever altered by the terrorist bombing in Madrid.

After the sudden death of his wife, Tomás, a successful elderly writer who has been out of Spain during the last forty years, unexpectedly receives an old tarot card which seems to have for him a disturbing meaning, so he decides to return to the small village where he grew up.

Recounts the experiences of a middle-class family, the Alcántaras, during the last years of the rule of Francisco Franco and the beginning of the Spanish Transition to democracy.