José Carlos Plaza

She appeared when Spain was waking up from a long post-war period and crying with melodramas starring children, a child prodigy unlike any other; a girl who, in time, would become a symbol of freedom and a total artist. Actress, singer, friend, lover. This is the story of Ana Belén.

An aspiring young writer lives with his pregnant wife and works for a newspaper to provide for his growing family. When his sister-in-law comes to visit, there is a mutual attraction between the guest and the writer.

Carmen, a journalist with two children, is on her third marriage, to Antonio, a record producer. Over the course of a year, we follow her through her discontents: Antonio's lateness, his fatigue when she wants to make love, his insistence on her company when she prefers solitude, his treating her work as less important than his, his casual and cruel dismissal of her opinions, her boss assigning her an incompetent editor, bartenders ignoring her, her passage into middle age. She can be feisty and edgy, which sometimes gets in the way of what would make her happy. And she regularly threatens to leave Antonio. Will she, and on what terms? What will he do?

4th February 1975. It's the first day of the historic actors strike that would bring the country's theatre activity to a halt for nine days. They demand one day off a week. What started out as a demand develops into political challenge. Concha Velasco, Ana Belén, Tina Sainz, Juan Diego and José Sacristán are some of the artists who risked their careers and their freedom. This is the story, narrated by its protagonists, as it has never been told before.