In 1960, Martín and Marcos are forced by their difficult personal circumstances to travel to Switzerland in search of work, leaving their families in the Madrid of Franco's Spain. But they undertake more than a simple journey; they begin the road to a new life.

At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the nun Maria is forced to flee her convent. She takes refuge in a brothel, until it is liberated by a woman's anarchist group. Maria joins the group and eventually goes to the front. The women's group faces the problems of fighting not only the nationalists, but also factions on the left seeking to impose a more traditional military structure.

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.

4,000 tons of oil have been stolen from a Galician deposit. The alleged thieves are defended by the lawyer Ramos, but the witnesses die and suspicions point to Franco's brother.

Tato Montini (Andrés Pajares), a popular radio show host and ladies man, agrees to donate his penis for a transplant after his death. He dies, goes to Heaven and discovers that even in afterlife he would have still needed his penis.

In a restaurant they're preparing a grand banquet in honor of a sports association of anglers, but several circumstances seem to have conspired to boycott the event.