At her grandmother's decaying apartment on the Calle de Aribau in Barcelona, Andrea finds the remnants of her family: a pitiful collection of people living in squalor amid the ruins of the family's former wealth. It is an environment which any young person would find oppressive, embarrassing, and even dangerous...
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(since Andrea's two uncles, Roman and Juan, regularly fight, and Juan also abuses his wife).
Andrea's life outside the family consists of the university, where she finds refuge from the dysfunction of the Calle de Aribau and befriends a rich and beautiful girl called Ena. Andrea keeps her university life quite separate from her family life until Ena meets and begins a relationship with Andrea's uncle Roman. This collision of her two worlds troubles Andrea greatly. She is concerned for her friend and is jealous of the new relationship which excludes her.
In the end, Andrea's friendship with Ena proves stronger than blood ties with her family. Although Ena only initiated the relationship with Roman to take revenge for his former ill-treatment of her mother, Andrea is only too happy to renew her friendship with Ena after Roman (in an unrelated incident involving his black market activities) has committed suicide. The beginning of their relationship (when her family life and university life overlap), however, is a particularly traumatic event in a life full of trauma.