The Imperfect Tense

The imperfect (el imperfecto) is a past tense, but it is not for saying that one thing happened and finished. It sets the scene. Use it for what used to happen, what was happening, and to describe the past.

Three jobs cover almost every use:

• Habitual — repeated actions and routines: "I used to walk to school."
• Ongoing — an action in progress with no clear end: "It was raining."
• Description — time, age, weather, appearance and feelings in the past.

Compare the two Spanish past tenses in one sentence:

Cuando era joven, comía mucho chocolate. — When I was young, I used to eat a lot of chocolate.

Here era (I was) and comía (I used to eat) are both imperfect: an ongoing state and a habit. Nothing happened at a single moment, so the preterite would be wrong.

The imperfect is one of the most regular tenses in Spanish. Take the infinitive, drop -ar / -er / -ir, and add the endings. The -er and -ir endings are identical.

Subject	hablar (-ar) → to speak	comer (-er) → to eat	vivir (-ir) → to live
yo	hablaba	comía	vivía
tú	hablabas	comías	vivías
él / ella / usted	hablaba	comía	vivía
nosotros/as	hablábamos	comíamos	vivíamos
vosotros/as	hablabais	comíais	vivíais
ellos/as / ustedes	hablaban	comían	vivían

Two accent points to lock in:

• The -ar nosotros form takes an accent: hablábamos, estudiábamos, jugábamos.
• Every -er / -ir form has an accent on the í: comía, vivíais, bebían. Drop it and you have misspelled the verb.

The yo and él/ella/usted forms are identical (hablaba, comía), so a subject pronoun or context tells you who is meant.

The imperfect has just three irregular verbs. Learn these and no other verb will surprise you.

Subject	ser → to be	ir → to go	ver → to see
yo	era	iba	veía
tú	eras	ibas	veías
él / ella / usted	era	iba	veía
nosotros/as	éramos	íbamos	veíamos
vosotros/as	erais	ibais	veíais
ellos/as / ustedes	eran	iban	veían

ver looks irregular but really just keeps the e of the stem before the normal -ía endings (ve + ía = veía). ser and era, and ir and iba, must simply be memorised.

Worked examples:

• Eran las tres de la tarde. → It was three in the afternoon.
• Todos los veranos íbamos a la playa. → Every summer we used to go to the beach.
• De niña, veía los dibujos animados. → As a child, I used to watch cartoons.

Match each use to real sentences so you can spot the imperfect in the exam and produce it in writing and speaking.

Habitual — "used to", routines:

• De pequeño, jugaba al fútbol todos los días. → As a child, I used to play football every day.
• Siempre estudiábamos juntos. → We always used to study together.

Ongoing — "was / were doing", background:

• Mi hermana leía mientras yo cocinaba. → My sister was reading while I was cooking.
• Llovía y hacía frío. → It was raining and it was cold.

Description — time, age, weather, appearance, feelings:

• Eran las ocho de la mañana. → It was eight in the morning. (telling the time in the past is always imperfect)
• Cuando tenía cinco años, vivíamos en Madrid. → When I was five, we lived in Madrid. (age)
• La casa era grande y tenía un jardín. → The house was big and had a garden. (description)

This is the decision examiners test most. Both are past tenses, but they do different jobs. The preterite reports a single, completed event; the imperfect gives the background, habit or ongoing action.

Question it answers	Tense	Example
What happened (once)?	preterite	Ayer comí paella. → Yesterday I ate paella.
What used to happen?	imperfect	Comía paella los domingos. → I used to eat paella on Sundays.
What was going on?	imperfect	Comía cuando llegaste. → I was eating when you arrived.

They often appear together: the imperfect sets the scene and the preterite is the event that cuts in.

Mientras veía la tele, sonó el teléfono. — While I was watching TV, the phone rang. veía = ongoing background (imperfect) · sonó = the single event that interrupted it (preterite)

Signal words help. Imperfect: siempre, todos los días, normalmente, mientras, a menudo, de niño. Preterite: ayer, de repente, una vez, el año pasado, anoche.

1. Choosing the wrong past tense

A one-off completed action is the preterite, not the imperfect. Ayer comía paella wrongly turns a single meal into a habit; write Ayer comí paella for "Yesterday I ate paella." Ask yourself: single event, or background/habit?

2. Dropping the accents

comía, vivíais and hablábamos all need their written accent. Comia and hablabamos are spelling errors that cost marks in writing and change the stress when read aloud.

3. Trying to make ser, ir and ver regular

You cannot build a regular form of ser or ir from a stem. Use the fixed forms era, iba and veía. These three are the only irregulars, so learning them fully removes the guesswork.

4. Confusing time in the past

Telling the time in the past uses the imperfect: Eran las diez (It was ten o'clock), never the preterite. The same goes for age and weather description.

5. Forgetting that yo and él share a form

hablaba means both "I was speaking" and "he/she was speaking". When the subject is not obvious, keep the pronoun (yo hablaba / él hablaba) so the meaning stays clear.