El Pretérito Imperfecto
The other half of the Spanish past. While pretérito indefinido and pretérito perfecto describe what happened, the pretérito imperfecto describes the world it happened in — backgrounds, habits, ongoing states, the weather, the time of day. Half of every Spanish past-tense paragraph lives in it.
The pretérito imperfecto is the past tense for everything that wasn’t a single event.
Where the pretérito indefinido and the pretérito perfecto describe completed actions — I ate, she went out, he closed the door — the imperfecto describes the world those actions happened in. Backgrounds. Habits. The way things were. Weather, age, mood, the slow ticking of an afternoon. It is the tense of the camera lingering before the action starts.
If you only know one Spanish past tense, you will sound like a tourist. If you know the indefinido and the imperfecto, you will pass.
Forms
The pretérito imperfecto is the most regular tense in Spanish. There is one set of endings for -ar verbs and another for -er/-ir verbs, with three irregulars total.
-ar verbs (hablar)
| Person | Form |
|---|---|
| yo | hablaba |
| tú | hablabas |
| él/ella/usted | hablaba |
| nosotros | hablábamos |
| vosotros | hablabais |
| ellos/ustedes | hablaban |
-er and -ir verbs (comer, vivir)
| Person | comer | vivir |
|---|---|---|
| yo | comía | vivía |
| tú | comías | vivías |
| él/ella/usted | comía | vivía |
| nosotros | comíamos | vivíamos |
| vosotros | comíais | vivíais |
| ellos/ustedes | comían | vivían |
The endings for -er and -ir verbs are identical.
The three irregulars
Only three verbs are irregular in the pretérito imperfecto. That’s it.
| Verb | Forms |
|---|---|
| ser | era, eras, era, éramos, erais, eran |
| ir | iba, ibas, iba, íbamos, ibais, iban |
| ver | veía, veías, veía, veíamos, veíais, veían |
The pretérito imperfecto is the most learner-friendly tense in Spanish. Three irregulars total, and ver is barely irregular (just preserves the e in ve-).
When to use it
There are four classic uses.
1. Background description
The setting before something happens. Weather, time, place, mood.
Era de noche. El viento soplaba. It was night. The wind was blowing.
2. Habits and repeated actions
Things that used to happen.
Cuando era niño, iba a la playa todos los veranos. When I was a child, I used to go to the beach every summer.
3. Ongoing actions interrupted by another action
A long action in progress, suddenly broken by a discrete event.
Dormía cuando sonó el teléfono. I was sleeping when the phone rang.
4. States of being and mind, ages, times
Tenía diez años. Era feliz. I was ten. I was happy. Eran las tres de la tarde. It was three in the afternoon.
The pair: imperfecto + indefinido
This is the central skill. Spanish past-tense paragraphs constantly alternate between the two registers.
Imperfecto describes the world. Pretérito indefinido moves it.
El cielo estaba gris. Llovía. María leía un libro. De repente, sonó el teléfono. The sky was gray. It was raining. María was reading a book. Suddenly, the phone rang.
Three sentences of imperfecto set the scene. One indefinido breaks it. This rhythm is the structural pattern of Spanish narrative prose.
In Cervantes’s Don Quijote, the famous windmills scene opens with imperfectos (the sun shining, the wind blowing, the two travelers riding) and shifts to pretérito indefinido at the moment Don Quijote sees the windmills (vio los molinos). Setting in imperfecto; event in indefinido.
Estar + gerundio (the past progressive)
For an action specifically happening right now in the past, Spanish uses estar in imperfecto + the gerund:
Estaba comiendo cuando llegó. I was eating when he arrived.
This is more emphatic than the bare imperfecto. Comía cuando llegó also works (imperfecto alone implies “was -ing”), but estaba comiendo makes the in-progress nature more vivid.
Hace + time + que (had been doing)
A Spanish-specific construction. To say I had been doing X for Y time, Spanish uses imperfecto + hacía + time:
Hacía tres años que estudiaba español cuando me mudé. I had been studying Spanish for three years when I moved.
Or with imperfecto + desde hacía:
Estudiaba español desde hacía tres años.
What you don’t need to do
You don’t need to translate imperfecto into one English form. It maps to was/were doing, used to do, sometimes did, sometimes would do — depending on context.
You don’t need to decide between imperfecto and indefinido through grammar charts. The split is semantic. After enough reading, the question was this a discrete event or a state of the world? becomes intuitive.
Common confusions
- Era vs. fue. Era is imperfecto (was, ongoing). Fue is pretérito indefinido (was/became, a moment). Era niño (I was a child, ongoing state) vs. Fue presidente (he was president, a defined period or moment).
- Tenía (años) vs. tuve. Age is always imperfecto. Tenía diez años (I was ten). Never tuve diez años.
- Estaba vs. estuvo. Continuing state vs. discrete event.
- Time-of-day always imperfecto. Eran las tres (it was three). Never fueron las tres.
Where you’ll meet it in the library
The imperfecto is everywhere. Notable books:
- Don Quijote (A2+) — Cervantes’s opening sentence is one of the most famous in Spanish literature, and it uses the imperfecto throughout to set Don Quijote up. The whole novel runs on the imperfecto-then-indefinido pair.
- Any Spanish novel or short story. The imperfecto is the descriptive layer of Spanish prose. Every paragraph in García Márquez, Borges, Cortázar, Allende uses it heavily.
Where you'll see this in books.
Había una vez un hidalgo que vivía en un pueblo de la Mancha. Tenía cincuenta años. Era flaco y alto. Leía libros de caballerías todo el día.
El sol brillaba en el cielo. El viento soplaba suavemente. Don Quijote y Sancho viajaban por el camino cuando vieron los molinos.
Cuando Sancho era niño, vivía con sus padres en el pueblo. Trabajaba en el campo y cuidaba las ovejas. Soñaba con tener su propia tierra algún día.