Camilo José Cela writes in the prologue to the first edition of the novel: "La Colmena is nothing more than a pale reflection, a humble shadow of the daily, harsh, endearing and painful reality (...) it does not aspire to be more than a piece of life narrated without reticence, without strange tragedies, without charity, how life goes on, exactly how life goes on. Whether we like it or not. Life is what lives -in us or outside of us-; we are more than its vehicle, its excipient as the apothecaries say (...) Its action takes place in Madrid, in 1942, and among a torrent, or a hive, of people who are sometimes happy, and sometimes not" . (FILMAFFINITY)