Vasco is a medical student in Lisbon, supported by his rich aunts, whom he had falsely told he had already graduated. In fact, he devotes himself to a bohemian life, preferring the popular fairs and pretty women, especially Alice, a seamstress from the Castelinhos quarter, which rather upsets her...
A Portuguese bourgeois dares to look at a Spanish lady's delicate ankles at the beach, but his wife will have nothing of it. Later, it's him that forbids his daughter from seeing a young man she had met at the same beach.
Gracinda, a young laundry washer, lives with her godfather, "Uncle" Jacinto, and together they run a family business, doing the laundry for residents of Lisbon in their small village in the outskirts of that city (Canecas). Unfortunately, the business is not going very well, but that changes when...
After losing her father in the sea, Rosa is lodged in the house of the lighthouse keeper João Vidal. António Gaspar, also a lighthouse keeper, loves Rosa. His jealousy of João Vidal will provoke the death of Rosa, an act that the mother of António will help to cover up.
João, a music teacher, tells his students the story of how twenty years earlier he fell in love with Anustchka, a circus performer, whom he left everything for.
