Santiago de Compostela and the Galician countryside, Spain, at the end of the 19th Century. A love story runs parallel to a student story. The lovers, helped by the young man's friends, deal with the intrigues of an ambitious family.

A count tries to charm Carmiña and invites her to join him in the city, where he abandons her. She decides to kill herself, but then Martiño comes into scene.

As a child, Jorge Samiera emigrated to Buenos Aires with his rich and childless uncle. Fifteen years later Jorge returns to Galicia, to inherit his possessions. In need of knowing more of his past and the family history Jorge visits the sorceress Úrsula, who tells him that he is Teresa's son, but warns him not to approach the town of Portomar.

In a country house of Galicia (Spain), Teresa and Fernando, beset by their economic situation, rent rooms to Mr. Morell and his niece Lina, who are looking for a quiet place to rest. Everything seems normal but, at night, when the doors of the rooms are closed, it seems as if uncle and niece apparently practice spiritualism.

Through a long flashback, the old Carmiña tells a painter her life in a small Galician village and how a miracle performed by the Virgin Mary saved the life of her beloved Antonio.

Gaspar is a saturnine, lackluster bachelor who falls in love with Rita, a moribund phthisic woman. When she passes away, Gaspar adopts her previous out-of-wedlock daughter, thus regaining faith in life. With the purpose of raising the girl, he brings home an English governess and an educated old friend. A toxic love triangle unfolds between the three adults.

Three navy comrades known as Botón de Ancla (Anchor Button) get into sentimental troubles which will endanger their friendship and their graduation at the naval academy.

A composer decides to give up work to care for his wife after having written a ballet for the famed bailaores Antonio and Rosario. When an old flame of the wife reappears tragedy develops as well as in the ballet.

Álvaro, the austere master of a Galician hacienda (pazo) falls in love with his maid Marcela, abandoned by her mother as a child, and treated by many as a sort of witch as her mother was considered, a son of the Northern Wind.

Aurelio leaves his village and goes to the capital to work with a relative in an emigration shipping company. He soon discovers that his relative earns a bonus extorting migrants who sell tickets. But Aurelio is an honest, sensible man who cannot allow such injustice, and he gets fired. Without telling his parents or girlfriend anything about what happened, he decides to stow away on a boat to America.

Gerardo Roquer's father sends his son, who is much more interested in nightlife and vaudeville chorus girls than in textbooks, from Madrid to the University of Santiago de Compostela to force him to study. Gerardo ends up staying at the "Casa de la Troya" boardinghouse, where he befriends other students and falls in love with the beautiful Carmiña Castro. But her aunt and uncle don't approve of their love; they prefer the foppish Octavio (to whom they owe a debt).

"Ugly, Catholic and sentimental", Javier de Montenegro is best known for the noble title he holds: that of Marqués de Bradomín. Rid of dying on the gallows thanks to Captain Casares, Bradomín helps him, in return, to flee to Mexico. Then, Bradomín retakes his old passion of youth towards Concha, married now with the Count of Bradesco. Six years later, Bradomín, now a gambler in Mexico, seduces the beautiful Niña Chole, lover of General Bermúdez, who heads the fight against the revolutionary troops in whose ranks is Captain Casares.

A married man has a brief affair, then goes back to his wife and children. His jilted mistress, believing that if he had no more family he'd come back to her, sets fire to his house, hoping to kill them. The man, unsuccessfully trying to rescue them, is horribly burned. After he undergoes an operation to reconstruct his face, he begins to plot his revenge against his former mistress.

The plot is loosely based on the legend from Galicia in north-west Spain of the founding by St Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) of the Convent of San Francisco near Santiago de Compostela in 1214 with the help of a poor charcoal burner named Cotolay, who found a buried treasure which paid for the construction. This slow moving but engaging film opens with St Francis arriving in Santiago with two other monks - Juan of Florence and Bernardo de Quintavalle - during a pilgrimage there to visit the tomb of St James the Apostle in the cathedral. He receives a divine revelation to tarry there until the meaning of his vision becomes clear. Faint with hunger he meets Cotolay (the 14-year-old Didier Haudepin) who gives the monks (stolen) figs to eat and leads them to the nearby Mount Pedroso where logging-master Tarna gives them food and lodging in return for work during their stay. While praying on the mountain St Francis believes he has been divinely instructed that his order of mendicant friars should found convents, starting at Santiago. Because St Francis is struck down with fever and blindness, Cotolay promises him that he will build it for him. Believing his grandfather's tales of buried treasure at a ruined abbey Cotolay vainly goes in search of it, until St Francis tells him that real treasure lies in one's self, in faith, humility and obedience; with these qualities one can build a whole world, not just a convent. With charm, piety, zeal and kindness Cotolay sets about his task, persuading the abbot of St Martin's Benedictine Monastery to grant a parcel of his land as large as a bull's skin in return for a basketful of fish. The abbot agrees but Cotolay cuts the skin into thin strips and marks out a far larger plot of land than expected in the Val de Dios (Valley of God). Next Cotolay gets the cathedral master mason Mateo to donate a pile of stones and has the loggers transport them to the chosen site in a competition of strength. After Mateo has constructed the convent St Francis is taken to the new building where his sight is restored. The film ends with St Francis taking his leave of a tearful Cotolay, who wants him to stay. (It should be noted that the version of the film with English subtitles is usually known as Cotolay, rather than by the original Spanish title of El Nino y El Lobo - The Boy and the Wolf.) The wolf of the Spanish title plays only a very minor part in the story and is eventually tamed by St Francis.

Two drifters go on a pilgrimage from France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Along the way, they hitchhike, beg for food, and face the Christian dogmas and heresies from different Ages.

Benito Freire is a peddler who lives miserably in an environment dominated by ignorance and superstition. He is dedicated to peddling by the Galician towns and suffers severe attacks of epilepsy. Through the region begins to spread the rumor that he is a werewolf and that he is possessed by a demonic spirit. And it will be precisely the stories that people are telling about him what start to make him go crazy.

Newlywed Susan is haunted by visions of Mircalla Karnstein, a centuries-old bride who murdered her husband on their wedding night.