In the story, set in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, a rich Argentine ranch owner builds a replica of Rick's Café Américain on his estate, with the idea of reproducing in it, by means of doubles, the most important scenes of the movie Casablanca.

Casablanca begins when the narrator, who is driving his car to Mar del Plata seaside resort, is caught by a big storm.

It all started, he says, in the early fifties, when the owner of those lands, a rich man very similar to Sydney Greenstreet —the actor who interpreted Señor Ferrari— decides to build a replica of Rick's café to reproduce in it the main scenes of the movie.

Some years of splendor follow, but an epidemic of hoof-and-mouth disease and an unexpected flood affect Señor Ferrari's property, and he goes bankrupt.

He speaks with President Perón to get a license to play for real money at the roulette wheel and the poker tables (up to that moment people pretended that they were gambling).

He had been considering the possibility of writing a fantastic narration (in the line of his The Poem or The Buddha's Eyes) that would be a tribute to his father's movie-theater, where he had spent his childhood years.

As he said: “I started Casablanca with the idea of writing a fantastic story that would pay tribute to my father's cinema, where I spent my early years.

Among them (and as a parallel between real life and fiction which Brau's work reflects perfectly), are the military coups that shook the nation in the period 1930-1980.

In the novella, the coup d´état which overthrew President Perón in 1955 was the beginning of the end for Ferrari's fabulous work, for his Casablanca —which had already been “hurt” by the flood and the hoof-and-mouth disease—.

In real life, the beginning of the end for that other “Casablanca”, Argentina, took place some years earlier, in 1930 (when José Félix Uriburu led a military coup against President Hipólito Yrigoyen), and the signs of decadence were revealed more slowly.