Dr. Foster (Stevens) returns to Spain for the first time since serving as a doctor for the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War three decades earlier. He meets the daughter (Vargas) of an old girlfriend (also named Maria) who accompanies him while he is attending a conference in Barcelona. He remembers the war while re tracing his steps from thirty years earlier in much the same way Alvah Bessie did while working on the film as an actor and writer.