Content Warning: The Spanish Daughter includes depictions of gender-based violence and discussions of miscarriage.

The Spanish Daughter opens with Maria Purificación de Lafont y Toledo (known as Puri) arriving in Ecuador on a steamship, dressed as Cristóbal, her recently murdered husband. Puri worries about her clothes, fearing detection. As a young man knocks down an elderly woman, Puri helps her up, and the elderly woman calls Puri a gentleman. The elderly woman’s daughter calls out to her mother, triggering memories of Puri’s deceased mother.

As Puri looks for her father’s lawyer, she drags her trunk and Cristóbal’s typewriter. The lawyer, Tomás Aquilino, asks about Puri, and Puri answers as her Cristóbal, telling him that Puri died on the steamer, a victim of Spanish Influenza.

Together, they ride in a Ford Model T to Tomás’s house, where they have lunch and smoke cigars, which causes Puri to cough. She explains that she only smokes pipes. The lawyer asks about Puri, as well as “Cristóbal’s” plans for the cacao plantation that Puri, along with her half-sisters Angélica and Catalina de Lafont, inherited together. Puri sold her chocolate shop in Sevilla, Spain, to come to Ecuador, and she’s shocked to learn about her father’s hidden family.