In a remote corner of 1930’s Spain a small settlement of ancient, displaced peasants eke out a precarious existence as squatters in a hilltop shanty-town reflecting the country’s unstable political balance in the stagnation between the First Republic and the coming civil war. One of these old ragpickers happens upon a week-or-so-old baby that has been abandoned in an alley of the nearby city. The old man does not hesitate to rescue the baby into his donkey cart because of the numerous large rats that infest the alleys. But persuading the other old folks to allow him and his wife to keep the baby is another matter. After much wrangling they all agree the old couple can keep the baby at least temporarily, providing no trouble is brought down on all their heads. Trouble of course is just what they get, as they struggle to keep the baby out of the abyss of a government orphanage as represented by a young government lawyer; and also out of the equally ubiquitous clutches of the Church orphanage program, personified by his opponent, an attractive young church social worker of his own age. The resolution of the ragpickers dilemma is echoed in the resolution of an incidental and convoluted romantic interest between the two young people.