María Romero

Alma’s family has been producing quality olive oil in the Baix Maestrat area of Spain’s Castellón for generations. Yet changing pressures in the industry have made their traditional practices economically untenable, and the family is now in the mass-production poultry business. Alma’s grandfather has not spoken in years. Sadness envelopes him, and he no longer wants to eat. His sons—Alma’s father and uncle—are impatient with him, but Alma understands her grandfather. She realizes he has been grieving for a thousand-year-old olive tree that the family has uprooted and sold to pay some debts. (A sadly common reality in Castellón at present.) Unable to bear the idea that her grandfather could die without seeing this terrible wrong corrected, Alma undertakes a quixotic mission to locate the tree and return it to the family orchard, so that her grandfather may have peace in his final days.

Three stories of three housemaids: Martina, shop steward, serves a marriage that can not have children because she entered the house with that condition. Basilia, Cateta coming to serve and not do anything, the contract for a small fee and let she carry a transistor always hung over the shoulder. And Lali, a gorgeous girl, but very serious and decent, it does not last any longer than 24 hours home because everyone wants to conquer.

Two murders shake the Finnish community of Fuengirola, a group that made this tiny corner of Málaga their own little Finnish paradise on the shores of the Mediterranean. Hilkka Mäntymäki, a veteran crime detective aged 60, is travelling from Helsinki to help the local police on a case that will soon claim new victims. Because escaping the cold and the dark is much easier than leaving your own past behind.