Ganito Kami Noon... Paano Kayo Ngayon?

Flanders, Hispanic Monarchy, 1616. The inhabitants of the small town of Boom are busy organizing the annual local festivities when the arrival of the Duke of Olivares, who rules the country on behalf of the King Philip III of Spain, is announced. While the male citizens cowardly surrender to panic, the brave female citizens decide to become the best hosts the Spaniards can ever meet. (German version of the French film La Kermesse héroïque, 1935.)

This is the life story of Mother Ignacia del Espiritu Santo, a Chinese-Filipina nun who founded the Congregation of the Sisters of the Religious of the Virgin Mary.

Crown of Castile, 1520. The Comuneros rise up against Charles I, king of Castile and Aragon and emperor of the Hispanic Monarchy. While Juan de Padilla, leader of the uprising, and his captains, Juan Bravo and Francisco Maldonado, fight against the imperial armies, his wife, María de Pacheco, rules the city of Toledo, capital of the rebels.

The tragic fate of Juana I of Castille, Queen of Spain, madly in love to an unfaithful husband, Felipe el Hermoso, Archduke of Austria.

Kingdom of Castile, 15th century. A group of nobles, who question the dynastic legitimacy of Princess Juana, daughter of King Enrique IV, conspire with the purpose of overthrowing him.

Flanders, Hispanic Monarchy, 1616. The inhabitants of the small town of Boom are busy organizing the annual local festivities when the arrival of the Duke of Olivares, who rules the country on behalf of the King Philip III of Spain, is announced. While the male citizens cowardly surrender to panic like rats on a sinking ship, the brave female citizens, led by the bold wife of the burgomaster, decide to become the best hosts the Spaniards can ever meet.

Buenos Aires, 1880. A journalist interviews Manuel Esteban Corvalán, one of the last living men who crossed the Andes in 1817 with José de San Martín, during the Argentinian and Chilean wars of independence, as one of his secretaries, when he was only 15 years old.

The snooty Fernanda decides to leave Spain to visit her uncle in San Francisco in order to escape the attentions of the dandy, amorous Don Diego, but he follows her. She is rescued from a wild taxi ride by a passerby who owns a huge plumbing company. Believing him to be a common plumber, she snubs him, but he pursues her and a romantic rivalry is born.

The film is liberally inspired by the period when Eça de Queiroz was Portuguese Consul in Cuba, when still a Spanish colony. Eça de Queiroz struggles against local authorities in his defense of Chinese workers, brought to the sugar plantations by greedy middlemen and exploited as slaves. Two parallel stories unfold, that of a Chinese girl which Eça de Queiroz saves from the clutches of one of the island’s most powerful slave owners, and the other of a romance involving a young American woman on holidays in Havana.

The story takes place in Equatorial Guinea, where Mr. Cuchillas leads a mafia gang that takes care of dirty business. Even a shoe shine will come to him, in search of a more profitable job.

Cortez sends Alvarado to Montezuma who throws him into a dungeon from which he is rescued by Tecza who loves him. He is recaptured when her lover Guatemoco finds Alvarado hiding in her chambers. Tecza next leads Cortez into the city, thus causing the destruction of her nation and securing the love of Alvarado.