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Paco and Régula live on a rural estate owned by an absent [[Marquess|marchioness]]. Along them live their three children: Nieves works as a maid in the big house; Quirce is doing his military service; and their youngest daughter Charito is severely handicapped and confined to a crib. The family is joined by Régula's mentally handicapped brother Azarías, sacked from another estate, who loves birds.
Daily life in the [[Cortijo|cortijo]] is shown in painstaking detail and displays an oppressive routine based on a rigid hierarchy. At the top of this stratified system lie the [[Spanish nobility|aristocrats]] owning this and other cortijos, as well as the [[Francoist_Spain|Francoist]] politicians and Church officials routinely visiting them. Rural [[Middle class|middle classes]] are represented by the manager Pedro and his bored wife Pura. The house servants and modern-day [[serfdom|serfs]] tending the land occupy the bottom level and are treated as subhuman beings by everyone else.
In this toxic class system, members of every echelon feel entitled to humiliate those deemed their social inferiors. For instance, the owner's son, ''señorito'' Iván, often comes back to the estate to openly conduct an affair with Pura, and her [[Cuckold|knowing]] husband takes out his impotent rage on the labourers, particularly Azarías.
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Paco and Régula accept the repeated humiliations of their position as dependents at the whim of the owners and the estate manager, but Nieves and Quirce are less inured to this reality and aim for a better life.
==Cast==
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