'You are going to be born today. You shouldn't be, but you will. You shouldn't because it's hell out there. There are demonstrations, day in, day out. People talk about elections. About attacks. About amnesties. But the story that will affect your own life is going to unfurl much closer, a few kilometres away. It will happen in Barcelona and there will be a little girl and a dog, a man and a woman, an old man and a painting. You hear the bells of a nearby church. You feel a new contraction. You are going to be born today. You shouldn't, but you will.' At midnight on 18 March 1977 the fate of a baby sliding from his mother's womb will be linked to the lives of six individuals. This is the work of a 'skilled demiurge' who, in placing the different and colourful lives of his characters in a sequence of time and space, recreates the intricate warp and weft of which life is made.