In 1940, in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, a young girl living on the Castilian plain is haunted after attending a screening of James Whale's 1931 film Frankenstein and hearing from her sister that the monster is not dead, instead existing as a spirit inhabiting a nearby barn.

Juan flees Madrid and an incestuous relationship with his sister, Ana, working at a mine on the Andalucian coast. When his friendship with Rosario, a local shop girl, becomes romance, Ana shows up wanting to rekindle their affair. He resists at first, but she stays, asserting that Juan is the only man she can ever love. Juan distances himself from Rosario. The mine has problems: high cancer rates in the area caused by poorly stored radioactive waste. A foreign safety engineer, Petersen, tries to connect with Ana, is rebuffed, but lets her stay in his sea-front bungalow. Juan seeks her out to demand she leave, only to argue with Petersen. Death, desire, and longing play out.

Spain, 1973. Dictator Francisco Franco has ruled the country since 1939 with an iron fist; but he is now a very old and sick man. The future of the weakened regime is in danger. Admiral Carrero Blanco is his natural successor. The Basque terrorist gang ETA decides that he must die to prevent the dictatorship from continuing.

A Jesuit priest in 1950s Spain becomes disillusioned with his faith, swapping religion for politics and carnal knowledge.

Juan, before the economic problems arising as a result of the arrival of democracy in Spain, decides to go to Venezuela, with Jaime, his brother, who has made ​​his fortune in that country. Juan hopes that Jaime will make him a loan, hoping that also Gloria, his daughte,r marries Isidro Gomez de Ansúrez, a boy from a wealthy family.

Girls of a corrupt orphanage are being sold by the sadistic matrons to a badly disfigured doctor. His sinister motive is to use the girls as guinea pigs in his experimental brain surgeries.

A workshop employee decides to take advantage of a long weekend to go to Torremolinos to have fun and chat up foreign tourists.