Writer in need of money returns to his hometown to try to write a new book. But his addiction to alcohol causes strange dreams that take him 50 years back to a Mardi Gras tuesday, when he was a teenager.

A fierce passion grows between a well-known actress and a gypsy, from whom she seeks advice about her role in a new version of Pygmalion.

Manuel and Clemente, couple in the shower and in various scheming, try to do business with miraculous apparitions. Near the Sevillian town of El Palmar de Troya, in 1968, people begin to say that the Virgin appears and the two friends take advantage of the situation. Soon a network of economic interests and credulity is created that makes it easier for Manuel and Clemente to achieve their goal: a monumental basilica, a religious order of nuns, priests and bishops of their own, and even a pope, Gregory XVII. Satire on the curious origin of the Palmarian Catholic Church and its unique founders.