Tú no estabas aquí el año pasado.

Sentence Discussions Spanish
#1
English Translation

You weren’t here last year.

www.spanish.academy/blog has “el año pasado” on the list of preterite trigger words. Why should this be imperfect?

#2

Both “estabas” and “estuviste” sound natural to me, but Spanish is admittedly not my first language. I think one possible context for the imperfect could be “No estabas aquí el año pasado, cuando te necesitaba”.

In the corpus we can also find " Él tenía el pelo largo el año pasado"; here “tuvo” would sound strange, right?

#3

It depends on the context AND intent. The example from @morbrorper could use either “estabas” or “estuviste” depending on the circumstances.

  • “no estuviste” would give a “you weren’t here for me when I needed you” vibe, reproachful
  • “no estabas” sounds more like “I happened to need you at the time, but you weren’t here, so…”

At least to my native “ear”

1 Like