This tense is used to talk about actions that happened in the past and are now completely finished. Think of these as events with a clear beginning and a clear end. The action is done and over.
We use this tense for single events that happened at a specific, finished time in the past. You will often see it with time words like yesterday, last week, or last year.
Ayer compré un libro.
(Yesterday I bought a book.)
La semana pasada
visitamos a mis abuelos.
(Last week we visited my grandparents.)
Anoche terminé el proyecto.
(Last night I finished the project.)
El año pasado
viajaron a México.
(Last year they traveled to Mexico.)
En 2010, ella se
mudó a Madrid.
(In 2010, she moved to Madrid.)
El otro día
vi una película interesante.
(The other day I saw an interesting movie.)
This tense is perfect for telling a story or describing a sequence of events that happened one after another. Each action in the sequence is finished before the next one starts.
Me
levanté, me
duché y
salí de casa.
(I got up, I showered, and I left the house.)
Primero,
abrió la puerta y
luego encendió la luz.
(First, he opened the door and then he turned on the light.)
Ella
llegó a la oficina,
dejó su bolso y
empezó a trabajar.
(She arrived at the office, left her bag, and started to work.)
El niño
tomó la pelota y la
lanzó.
(The boy took the ball and threw it.)
Use this tense for a new action that interrupts an ongoing activity in the past. The interrupting action is a single, completed event.
Yo leía
cuando el teléfono
sonó.
(I was reading when the phone rang.)
Caminábamos por el parque
cuando empezó a llover.
(We were walking through the park when it started to rain.)
Él dormía
cuando el despertador lo
despertó.
(He was sleeping when the alarm clock woke him up.)
This tense describes an action that lasted for a specific amount of time, and that period is now completely over.
Viví en Barcelona
por cinco años.
(I lived in Barcelona for five years.)
Ellos
hablaron durante dos horas.
(They talked for two hours.)
La película
duró tres horas.
(The movie lasted three hours.)
It is also used to mark the specific start or end point of an action or state in the past.
La clase
empezó a las nueve.
(The class started at nine.)
El concierto
terminó muy tarde.
(The concert ended very late.)
De repente,
comprendí el problema.
(Suddenly, I understood the problem.)
The most important idea for this tense is that the action is viewed as a single, complete block of time in the past. The speaker sees the event as finished and contained.
