Victor Dalmau reaches into a soldier's exposed chest during battle and manually squeezes his stopped heart back to life.

Guillem Dalmau is killed when a bomb explodes at the Battle of the Ebro River.

After losing Carme in the retreat, Aitor and Roser cross the snowy Pyrenees on foot with a hired guide into France.

Swiss nurse Elisabeth Eidenbenz sponsors Roser out of the French refugee camp and brings her to a safe maternity house.

Victor proposes a marriage of convenience to Roser so they can board Pablo Neruda's refugee ship, the Winnipeg, as a family.

The Winnipeg docks at Valparaíso, and Felipe del Solar, impressed by Victor and Roser, invites them to stay in his home.

With Salvador Allende's help, Victor finishes his medical degree and becomes a cardiologist, drawn to the organ he once saved by hand.

Victor and Ofelia del Solar meet again by chance in Santiago and begin a passionate, secret love affair.

Salvador Allende wins the Chilean presidential election, sparking joyful celebrations in the streets.

General Pinochet leads a military coup that overthrows the democratic government and kills President Salvador Allende.

Victor is arrested after being denounced by a neighbor and transported to a brutal concentration camp in the northern Chilean desert.

Victor saves the concentration camp commandant's life by performing emergency heart surgery and is soon released.

Fearing rearrest, Victor seeks asylum in the Venezuelan embassy and flees Chile for Venezuela with Roser.

Victor and Roser are authorized to return to Chile after years of exile in Venezuela.

A woman named Ingrid Schnake arrives at Victor's door and reveals she is his biological daughter.

Beginning on the frontlines of the Spanish Civil War, Victor Dalmau's medical skill marks him as someone who can save lives against all odds. The collapse of the Spanish Republic forces Victor and Roser to survive French concentration camps before boarding a refugee ship bound for Chile. In their new country, they rebuild their lives through talent and the help of progressive allies, including health minister Salvador Allende. Victor's forbidden affair with upper-class Ofelia del Solar tests his marriage but ultimately deepens his bond with Roser. History repeats when a military coup led by Pinochet destroys Chilean democracy, sends Victor to a concentration camp, and forces the couple into exile a second time. After years abroad, they eventually return to Chile, where Victor's life takes a final unexpected turn when a woman arrives at his door claiming to be his biological daughter.

Victor and Roser's journey from war and exile to a new life in Chile.

Victor's father Marcel has a heart attack and on his deathbed instructs Victor to take Roser and Carme out of Spain.

Aitor shows Victor his brother Guillem's identity card as proof of his death at the Battle of the Ebro.

Carme quietly slips away from Roser and Aitor during the nighttime retreat, unwilling to slow their escape.

Victor crosses into France with the last wounded soldiers from Spain and is placed in a French refugee camp.

Aitor visits Victor in the French concentration camp and urges him to leave Europe before the coming war traps him there.

On the family's rushed return voyage to Chile, Ofelia secretly gives her cabin to a Jewish family about to be disembarked.

Juana persuades Isidoro del Solar to include the Dalmaus in the family's Christmas celebration despite his hostility toward refugees.

Victor and Jordi Moline open a Catalan-style tavern together, naming it the Winnipeg after the refugee ship.

Ofelia breaks off her engagement to Matias Eyzaguirre, confessing she is in love with someone else.

Father Urbina and Laura del Solar secretly arrange to take Ofelia's newborn baby and place it for adoption without Ofelia's knowledge.

Victor guides Pablo Neruda on horseback through the Andes to help him secretly escape Chile into Argentina.

Carme emigrates to Chile after reuniting with her family in Andorra, bringing the dog whose whining once saved her life.

Roser returns to Chile after the coup and spends months searching desperately for the disappeared Victor.

Victor and Roser attend Ofelia del Solar's art exhibition in Venezuela, seeing each other for the first time since their affair ended.

On returning to Chile, Victor is barred from working in the public hospital and takes a position at a private clinic instead.

Before Victor and Roser can escape Spain, a chain of painful events sets their journey in motion: the death of Victor's father, the confirmation of Guillem's death, and Carme's quiet disappearance into the night during the retreat. In France, Victor is placed in a second refugee camp, surviving until Aitor arrives to urge him to flee Europe entirely. Once in Chile, social connections open unexpected doors, including a Christmas dinner invitation that first brings the Dalmaus into the del Solar orbit. Ofelia's secret pregnancy ends with a devastating conspiracy between her mother and the family priest, while Ofelia separately tries to make peace with her fate by accepting Matias's renewed proposal. Through the Pinochet years, Roser searches desperately for the disappeared Victor, and the couple later navigates exile in Venezuela, where old friendships and long-buried secrets about affairs and lost children slowly come to light.

The supporting events and relationships that shaped Victor and Roser's story.

Roser safely gives birth to Marcel in a Quaker family's house in France, thanks to Elisabeth Eidenbenz's intervention.

Felipe del Solar's progressive group hosts Pablo Neruda, who announces his plan to charter a ship to rescue Spanish refugees.

Victor and Ofelia del Solar meet at the Christmas feast and feel an immediate, intense mutual attraction that both Felipe and Roser notice.

Ofelia discovers she is pregnant with Victor's child, and the del Solar family summons Father Urbina to manage the crisis.

At the convent, Ofelia reverses her position and insists to Father Urbina that she intends to keep her baby.

Unconscious during childbirth, Ofelia is told her baby boy has died and is kept sedated for two weeks afterward.

Ofelia accepts Matias Eyzaguirre's renewed marriage proposal despite everything that has happened and vows to love him as he deserves.

A letter from Carme arrives on Marcel's tenth birthday, revealing that she survived the retreat from Spain.

Carme warns Victor that Chile under Allende faces the same conservative backlash that destroyed the Spanish Republic.

Carme dies on her birthday, and Victor buys a burial plot for her in Chile, feeling he definitively belongs to the country.

Chilean citizens vote against Pinochet continuing in power in a national referendum, setting the country on a path back to democracy.

Victor and Roser return to Spain after Franco's death but find it unrecognizable and conclude it is no longer their home.

Victor finally tells Roser he will not let her suffer any longer, accepting that her death from cancer is near.

Laura del Solar confesses on her deathbed and asks Juana to find Ofelia's long-lost daughter and reveal the truth of what happened.

After Ingrid leaves, Victor resolves to walk to his neighbor Meche's house, choosing to live and love once more.

This pool traces the pivotal decisions and discoveries that quietly redirect the characters' lives, beginning with Marcel's birth in France — the child whose existence made Victor and Roser's marriage necessary. A gathering of Chilean progressives plants the seed of the Winnipeg rescue, and a Christmas encounter between Victor and Ofelia sparks a doomed affair that sets off a chain of secrets and betrayals. Ofelia's pregnancy leads to one of the novel's darkest moments: a priest and a mother conspiring to steal a newborn and lie to the woman who bore him. As political crisis looms in Chile, an aging Carme recognizes the warning signs she lived through in Spain, and her death cements Victor's identity as permanently Chilean. The pool closes with quiet but profound acts of acceptance — Victor letting Roser go, a deathbed confession unlocking a decades-old secret, and Victor finally choosing to live again.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that define the characters' fates.