Galicia, northern Spain, January 2, 1921. The steamship Santa Isabel, sailing towards Argentina with more than two hundred emigrants on board, sinks off the coast of Sálvora Island. Three island women, María, Josefa and Cipriana, who have bravely set sail aboard a fragile skiff to save the shipwrecked, are treated as heroes by the cynical authorities; but León, an inquisitive and tenacious Argentinean journalist, starts asking uncomfortable questions.

Galicia, Spain, during the Second World War The life of Manuela, a mysterious miner who was branded a witch, changes with the arrival of an Allied commando, in charge of sabotaging the production of tungsten, a vital mineral for the continuity of the war effort of Nazi Germany.

A portrait of the Spanish actress María Casares (1922-96).

During the Second World War, the Allies threaten to attack Spain, an allegedly neutral country, if the Francoist regime keeps allowing Nazi Germany to extract Galician tungsten, a strategic mineral, paramount to the war effort.