Isabel Jimenez is a teenager witnessing a horrible feud between her own family and the Fuentes family, a fued involving broken hearts, property disputes and a mysterious fire that destroyed the Fuentes house. Isabel’s uncle is murdered by Jeronimo Fuentes, who later tries to stab her father. After Jeronimo dies in jail, Isabel must look outside of her family for the truth, learning from the village idiot that her father may have set fire to the Fuentes home.

Set in Catalonia, Painless weaves two stories: in one, starting during the Spanish Civil War and running through to the ’60s, an asylum attempts to rehabilitate children who feel no pain, by teaching them physical suffering. In the second, in the present time, a brilliant neurosurgeon who needs a bone marrow transplant, discovers this dark past when he searches for his biological parents.