If a woman had ever been destined to shine, it was Beatriz Calanda, whose eccentric, outrageous life iunfolds during the last sixty years of Spanish history. Darling of society magazines, with a life etched with glamour, scandals and scoops, the grande dame of the Madrid jet set, everyone knows who Beatriz Calanda is and who her four husbands were. Everyone knows her but no one, not even the husbands, much less her children, knows who she really is. To discover what lies behind the dazzling exterior, it is necessary to travel to the past, to her adolescence in Madrid during the transition to democracy. And also to her mother's youth during the dark postwar years. In a story reminiscent of Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Carmen Posadas has produced an ironic, witty vivisection of the hermetic, exclusive high society world.