With a prestigious job and a loving family, Emilio (José Coronado) has the kind of life someone would kill for. But beneath it all is a horrible lie. Emilio's wife, Ágata (Adriana Ozores), becomes suspicious when Emilio picks up a guest pass to enter the Bank of Spain -- where, ostensibly, he works as an economist. But the house of cards starts crashing down when Emilio meets a needy college student, Rosana (Marta Etura), and begins an affair that proves disastrous.

Fernando (Fernando Tejero) is a loser. A gray type, without ambition, that works like bookcases distributor in a supermarket of the quarter. In his free short whiles, he is a substitute keeper of a football team, a third regional one. In all the season he has not played a single minute. But the last Sunday of the league the referee indicates penalty and the regular keeper injures itself. Fernando must occupy the goal for the first time. If penalty scores, the team of the district will proclaim champion. If no, all the effort of a year will not have been worth for anything. When the penalty is just about to be kicked, a group of indignant fans with the referee invades the field and prevents the kick. The competition committee decides that the penalty must play the following Sunday, in the same goal, with same players and the field closed to the public. El Penalti más largo del mundo, (The Longest Penalty Shot in the World) is exactly the history of that week of delay.

Two Spanish pan-handlers soon find themselves in over their heads when they stumble upon an opportunity to redeem themselves and perhaps the entire planet. The world appears to suffer from rampant poverty, violence and spiritual desperation and the relentless news media force-feeds these images to the Spanish people. A popular reality television show lets the audience decide between life or death for suspected felons, and one of the opportunistic pan-handlers attempts to escape poverty through this raucous and sensational TV program.