Part 1 begins with the aftermath of a failed bank robbery by a woman named "Tokyo", as a man named the "Professor" saves her from being caught by the police and proposes her a heist of drastic proportions. After a brief outline of the planned heist, the story jumps to the beginning of a multi-day assault on the Royal Mint of Spain in Madrid. The eight robbers are code-named after cities: Tokyo, Moscow, Berlin, Nairobi, Rio, Denver, Helsinki and Oslo. Dressed in red jumpsuits with a mask of the Spanish painter Salvador Dalí, the group of robbers take 67 hostages as part of their plan to print and escape with €2.4 billion through a self-built escape tunnel. The Professor heads the heist from an external location. Flashbacks throughout the series show the five months of preparation in an abandoned hunting estate in the Toledo countryside; the robbers are not to share personal information nor engage in personal relationships, and the assault shall be without bloodshed.
Throughout parts 1 and 2, the robbers inside the Mint have difficulties sticking to the pre-defined rules, and face uncooperative hostages, violence, isolation, and mutiny. Tokyo commentates the events through voice-overs. While Denver pursues a love affair with the hostage Mónica Gaztambide, inspector Raquel Murillo of the National Police Corps negotiates with the Professor on the outside and begins an intimate relationship with his alter ego "Salva". The Professor's identity is repeatedly close to being uncovered, until Raquel realises his true identity, but is emotionally unable and unwilling to hand him over to the police. At the end of part 2, after 128 hours, the robbers escape successfully from the Mint with €984 million printed, but at the cost of the lives of Oslo, Moscow and Berlin. One year after the heist, Raquel decodes postcards left by the Professor for a location in Palawan in the Philippines, where she reunites with him.
