On the occasion of awarding the Cervantes Prize to the Catalan writer Juan Marsé on 23 April 2009, family members, friends and writers offer a sincere portrait of the best chronicler of life in Barcelona, Catalonia, during the post-war period and the worst days of the General Franco dictatorship, in the forties and fifties, and during the economic development and the hard conquest of freedom, in the sixties and seventies.

José Luis has a cushy corporate job at the lingerie factory his mom owns. After he falls in love and proposes to Silvia, a beautiful laborer on the underwear assembly line, his mom enlists Raul, a potential underwear model and would-be bullfighter, to seduce Silvia.