Plot Summary:In 1939, José Garcés is in French prison camp after the defeat of Spain's Republicans. To entertain and inspire his fellow prisoners, he tells the story of becoming a man in 1919, the year he realized that learning to live is the same as learning to die. His stiff and demanding father loses a fortune in German war bonds, takes a job in Caspe, and leaves José on his own in Zaragoza to finish high school while apprenticing in a pharmacy. José courts his beloved Valentina via letters, becomes intimate with Isabel, a maid he meets in a cinema who shares his ideas of free love, and comes under the influence of El Checa, an anarchist and gentle teacher who leads a doomed revolt.
1939年,在西班牙共和党人被击败后,乔斯加尔斯在法国的监狱集中营里。为了娱乐和鼓舞他的战友,他讲述了在1919年成为一个男人的故事,那一年他意识到学习生活和学习死亡是一样的。