Antonio Castro, Sinatra, is a fighter of life working in an old cabaret in Barcelona imitating Frank Sinatra, accompanied in his show by Groucho Marx, Marlene Dietrich and Lola Flores. But one day, the sky dresses in gray for him; his wife, who works as a waitress in the same place, decides to leave him.
In the post Spanish civil war years, Catalan kids would sit in circles among the ruins and tell stories, known as "aventis" (the film's original title in Catalan, its original language). These tales mix war stories, local gossip, comic book characters, fantasy and real events. The "aventis" told in this film are told in flashback. In the mid 80s, 45 or so years after the age of the "aventis," a doctor and a nurse-nun (who grew up together, and now are co-workers in a hospital) identify the corpse of one of the main characters of the "aventis" of their childhood and adolescence. Besides the interesting flashbacks - a chronical of the Civil War in a "typical" Barcelona microcosm itself, the discovery of this body (belonging to someone long presumed dead) leads to other surprises and unresolved doubts, several decades later
A young woman marries a rich man and begins a new life in a little town in the Spain of the 20s. Feeling trapped and bored, she begins a relationship with her husband's stepbrother.
