Ramón Cervantes, a rich Castilian landowner, arrives in a humble town in Almería, looking for a wife. María, the eldest sister of the family, decides to sacrifice herself to ensure a better future for her family. María has been missing for years a boyfriend who went to Germany and whom she promised to wait for, but about whom she has not known anything for a long time. At the ceremony she discovers with horror that her wedding is by proxy and that the person she is really marrying is his nephew, Manuel. Furthermore, she discovers that Manuel has a son and that his wife disappeared under strange circumstances.
