Summer 1985. As every year, Rodri travels from Catalonia to Galicia and is reunited with his four friends. As real-world problems begin to undermine their friendship, the five of them embark on a nighttime adventure in search of a mythical object.

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.