A pompous, aging alcoholic and a tourettes-inflicted ten-year-old boy are forced to spend a week together at a high-end hotel. The only thing these two have in common is that they are both difficult to like. The hotel serves as their shared escape from the outside world and the problems it presents.

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.