Nineteen-year-old Julio heads to Lisbon from the provinces and gets a job as a shoemaker for his uncle Raul. But when he meets Ilda, a confident young housemaid who becomes a regular shop visitor, his working-class values collide with the bourgeois trappings of modern life.
Trafaria changes his business to Angola, in search of a more profitable occupation, by shaming the pioneers. There he engages in the obscure social and political environment, from which emerge some characteristic figures - administrators, their wives and secretaries, Arabs, police officers, priests...
Jorge, a successful engineer and employee of a ministry and Luísa, a romantic and dreamy girl, star as the typical bourgeois couple of the Lisbon society of the 19th century.
Nair marries Renato for love, and is unhappy because her husband all the money with his lover, Arlete. Sónia, Nair's friend, is a woman who lives happy with a man out of wedlock. Sónia's example Nair to accept the advances of Jorge, a lawyer who lives separate his wife. During a jealousy fight,...
