Aim: to understand how nursing students at the end of their nursing education view nursing care. Background: although care is understood as the essence of nursing, it is often difficult for nurses to provide care, which demonstrates a contradiction between theory and practice. Moreover, it is unknown to what extent this contradiction is transmitted to future nursing professionals or how they view nursing care and its practice. Design: qualitative ethnographic research. Methods: the fieldwork was conducted between December 2010 - May 2012 in a university nursing school in Barcelona and two centres where students carry out most of their practical education. The data collection techniques were participant observation and focus groups. A thematic analysis was used. Results: the students demonstrated contradictory views of nursing care. On one hand, they voiced a more theoretical, official definition where care is considered the core of the profession. On the other hand, they also expressed a view where the provision of care is not nurses' principal daily activity, a fact that did not surprise them. Students interpreted caring as an activity that has low value and that can be transferred unproblematically to other professionals. Conclusion: the contradictory views of care reveal a problem in the transmission of the definition of nursing to new generations of professionals and reflect a problematic professional reality where there is dissonance between how nursing is defined and how it is carried out in practice.