Habanera: Year 1860. Rosa Maria, daughter of a wealthy Cuban landowner, is studying at a convent school in Cadiz and requests to return to Cuba after spending many years in Spain. But now the economic situation of his father is disastrous and therefore he tries to delay the return of his daughter, hiding that fact. Rosa Maria knows nothing and, at the refusal of his father, she runs away from school, embarking as a stowaway on a ship bound for home.