1919 Chronicle of Dawn

In 1939 José Garcés is in French prison camp after the defeat of Spains 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