Usage: Age, Time, Weather | Spanish (Latin America) Grammar

Three specific kinds of information are almost always expressed with the imperfect when talking about the past: age, time of day, and weather. Learn these patterns and you will sidestep one of the most common preterite/imperfect mistakes that learners make.

Age in the past

To say how old someone was, use tener in the imperfect: tenía X años. The preterite (tuvo X años) sounds strange unless you specifically want to treat the age as an event, which is unusual.

Spanish	English
tenía diez años	I was ten years old
tenías veinte años	you were twenty years old
tenía sesenta años	he / she was sixty years old
teníamos la misma edad	we were the same age
tenían poco tiempo juntos	they had little time together

Cuando tenía diez años, vivía con mis abuelos en el campo.

When I was ten years old, I lived with my grandparents in the countryside.

Mi mamá tenía veintitrés años cuando nací.

My mom was twenty-three when I was born.

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Age is a state, not an event. Nobody becomes ten in a single instant — they simply are ten for a year. That is why Spanish treats it as background information.

Telling time in the past

To say what time it was, use ser in the imperfect: era la una (it was one o'clock) or eran las ocho (it was eight o'clock). Notice that era is singular only for la una — all other hours are plural: eran las dos, eran las tres, eran las doce.

Spanish	English
era la una	it was one o'clock
eran las dos y media	it was two thirty
eran las cinco de la tarde	it was five in the afternoon
eran las diez de la noche	it was ten at night
era tarde	it was late

Eran las tres de la tarde cuando sonó la alarma.

It was three in the afternoon when the alarm went off.

Era la una de la mañana y todavía nadie dormía en la casa.

It was one in the morning and still nobody was sleeping in the house.

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Using fue to tell the time (fueron las cinco) is a classic learner mistake. In Spanish you always say eran las cinco — the time is the backdrop of a scene.

Weather in the past

Weather is another piece of scene-setting, so it lives in the imperfect. The verbs you will see most often are hacer (hacía frío, hacía calor), estar (estaba nublado), haber (había niebla), and weather-specific verbs like llover (llovía) and nevar (nevaba).

Hacía mucho frío aquella mañana de invierno.

It was very cold that winter morning.

Llovía sin parar desde el mediodía.

It was raining non-stop since noon.

Estaba nublado y parecía que iba a llover en cualquier momento.

It was cloudy and it looked like it was going to rain at any moment.

Putting them all together

It is extremely common to combine age, time, and weather in a single scene-setting sentence at the start of a story. This is pure imperfect territory.

Yo tenía ocho años, eran las siete de la mañana y hacía mucho frío cuando mi papá me llevó a la escuela por primera vez.

I was eight years old, it was seven in the morning, and it was very cold when my dad took me to school for the first time.

Notice the single preterite llevó in the middle — the one action that moves the story forward. Everything else is imperfect because everything else describes the setting.

Quick summary

Category	Verb	Example
Age	tener	tenía diez años
Time	ser	eran las tres
Weather	hacer / estar / llover	hacía frío, llovía

Common mistakes

❌ Tuve diez años cuando nos mudamos.

Wrong: age in the past is always imperfect.

✅ Tenía diez años cuando nos mudamos.

Correct: tenía (imperfect) for age.

❌ Fueron las cinco cuando llegamos.

Wrong: clock time in the past uses the imperfect.

✅ Eran las cinco cuando llegamos.

Correct: eran (imperfect) for telling time.

❌ Hizo frío toda la mañana.

Wrong if describing background weather — use the imperfect.

✅ Hacía frío toda la mañana.

Correct: hacía (imperfect) for weather as scene-setting.

Next, look at ongoing and simultaneous actions, where the imperfect shows an action already in progress.