Plot

La Gaviota (The Seagull) is a drama that follows Barbara (Maria Antonienta Pons), an eccentric young woman who works in a seaside hotel. Barbara has a perfect life and boyfriend, Antonio, but things are about to change. A ship has come to port, and with it Don Carlo, a rich and suave artist who is the embodiment of the perfect 1950's man. The friction and conflict mounts when he checks into Barbara's hotel. When Antonio new job as a sailor sends him off on board the Mary Dolores, the temptation of a mustachioed business man is too great for Barbara. Soon her perfect life is destroyed as she faces adversity from all of the men and women in her life.

When Antonio returns, he finds out about her affair with Don Carlo and leaves her to concentrate on his new profession. Unexpectedly, Don Carlo's wife (to whom he is separated) comes to town and causes a stir and Don Carlo is forced to go back with her so that he can arrange a legal divorce. He leaves money for Barbara and writes a note telling her where he is going, but the tricky wife of the hotel owner takes the money to buy a refrigerator so the hotel can have cold beer, and she discard the note. The hotel owner takes advantage of the availability of cold beer, and during his drunken attempt to rape Barbara, his wife finds the two and throws Barbara out of the hotel.

Barbara, now jobless, is reunited with Antonio during a dinner party, and as the two dance, they slowly rekindle their feelings for each other. A fight breaks out, however, between Antonio and another man, and Antonio ends up with a knife in his spine, paralyzing him from the waist down. With no income coming from either of them, Barbara is forced to try performing in the local bar, but her slow ballads do not impress the manager or the customers, so she rips off her dress to reveal skin-colored undergarments, and begins doing a burlesque dance. The crowd and manager are instantly pleased, but Barbara is disgraced and escapes to her dressing room to cry about it.

Meanwhile, Don Carlo has returned and he goes to the hotel to find Barbara. The hotel owners confess to what they did and go with him to the bar to apologize to Barbara and explain what has happened. Barbara is now forced to make the tough decision between leaving with the rich artist or staying with the jobless paraplegic.

In the last scene, she carries her one tiny suitcase stuffed with all of her mini-dresses to Antonio's house to say good bye. Coincidentally, she stumbles in right as Antonio is holding a pistol to his head about to attempt suicide. Her presence startles him, since he probably never expected to see her again, and he puts the gun down. Right then, she changes her mind and embraces Antonio, apparently choosing to stay with him so he will not kill himself. We then see Don Carlo waiting at the dock for his beloved Barbara, but she never comes.