While watching on television a bullfight where his son Luis acts, the matador Rafael Lucena dies of a heart attack upon discovering Virginia in the bullring, a woman who looks like Soledad. Soledad was his father ‘s, Manuel Lucena, great love. Both Luis and his brother Alejandro meet the singer Virginia and fall in love with her but when Luis suffers serious goring, he begins to think that Virginia brings bad luck.
Right-handers Ricardo Puente, Juan Carmona and Rondeño II, which will take the alternative are advertised in the poster. The first is an old bullfighter, famous in the past, as now, bitter and full of rancor, lives with Paloma, a woman who is not resigned to continue to be the lover of a man who has fallen into oblivion. Carmona, the Bullfighter of fashion, has a major contract to fight in America, but his wife Isabel wants to reject the offer. Ana Maria, the sister of Carmona, hopes that his brother adopted its relations with Rondeno II; but Carmona was opposed because considers it it a bad Bullfighter
In Madrid, under Queen Isabel II reign, rebellions are frequent events. During one of them Captain Jorge de Córdoba, nicknamed Veneno (poison) for his quarrelsome disposition, bad temper and outright misogyny, is hurt and taken to a house where two women, a widow and her daughter, are to take care of him.