English Translation
That’s how it was.
“era” seems to work momentarily, but it changes to “fue.” Why?
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I think ‘fue’ is correct here as this meaning conveys a completed action in the past.
Perhaps some more advanced Spanish learners in here can comment further.
Conceptually, the differences between the two past tenses are fairly easy to grasp: the imperfect tense generally refers to actions that occurred numerous times and/or didn’t have a definite end, while the preterite typically refers to actions that took place or at least ended at a definite time.
Welcome to the forum, LightLife!
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That’s not how I would understand this English sentence, though. It’s probably referring to a general state for some undefined period in the past. But it’s often not really worth worrying about these distinctions when translating sentences utterly devoid of context.
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They have different meanings. I am not really good at explaining things but I will try.
Así es como fue = That’s how it was / That’s how it went down. (Talking about something in general )
Así es como era = That’s how she/he/it was. (Person / Animal / etc)
Así es como era = That’s how it was. (When describing anything, a door , a car, a film , living in a specific era, etc.
Basically, use así es como fue when talking about how something went down 
and era for the rest of things.
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About the “mysterious” behavior: there is probably an alternative answer, “era”, for the cloze.
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