Set in the imaginary northern city of Vetusta and a faithful reflection of 19th century Spain, it tells the story of Ana Ozores, a beautiful woman bored by her bourgeois marriage with the former regent, much older than her, and who is torn between love spiritual and mystical that he feels for his confessor, the masterful Fermín de Pas, and the carnal passion provoked in him by the cacique and Don Juan Álvaro Mesía.