Imperfecto de indicativo (Imperfect Tense of the Indicative Mood)

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So far, you have learned one tense to describe the past: el pretérito. However, Spanish has another past tense, el imperfecto (the imperfect), which is also used to describe past events. Let’s take a look at how it works!

The imperfect tense is a past tense that is used to describe:

• Acciones repetidas en el pasado (cosas que solías hacer habitualmente) (Repeated actions in the past (things you used to do habitually).

• Cada vez que Nuria y yo salíamos 🚶, íbamos por un helado 🍨al final de la noche.

• Every time that Nuria and I would go out, we would go for ice cream at the end of the night.

• Descripciones en el pasado (edad, hora, clima, emociones, descripciones físicas) (Descriptions in the past (age, time, weather, emotions, physical descriptions))

• Eran las 7:00 p.m. 🕖, la noche 🌠estaba tranquila y yo me sentía muy calmada. 😌

• It was 7:00 p.m., the night was tranquil and I felt very calm.

• Acciones que ocurren al mismo tiempo (simultáneamente) en el pasado (sin claro inicio o final) (Actions happening at the same time (simultaneously) in the past (without a clear start or end))

• Mientras la psíquica 🔮leía los futuros de las chicas, ellas se reían 😂y tomaban videos 🤳para sus redes sociales.

• While the psychic read the girls’ futures, they laughed and took videos for their social medias.

There are also some words that often trigger the use of the imperfect, such as:

• Siempre

• Always

• A menudo

• Often

• Cada día, cada semana

• Every day/ every week

• Todos los días

• Every day

• Cuando era niño/a/e

• When I was a child

• Mientras

• While

Let’s take a look at the conjugation patterns for different verbs:

– ar verbs

– er and – ir verbs

Here are some fully conjugated regular verbs in the imperfect:

Visitar (to visit)

Querer (to want)

Sentir (to feel)

Luckily, there are only three irregular verbs in the imperfect tense, the rest follow the regular pattern described above. The only three irregular verbs in the imperfect tense are ser, ir and ver.

Ser (to be)

Ir (to go)

Ver (to see)

In addition, keep in mind that the conjugation for haber (there was/there were) in the imperfect tense is había.

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