There are three categories where the choice between preterite and imperfect isn't a stylistic preference — it's a hard grammatical rule. Age in the past, time of day and date, and weather as state all take the imperfect, always, when describing the situation at a past moment. Using the preterite here doesn't sound stylistically off; it sounds wrong, or means something completely different.
This page exists because these three categories produce some of the most stubborn errors in intermediate Spanish — even after a learner has internalised the rest of the preterite-imperfect contrast. The reason is that English collapses all three into the simple past, so there's no native-speaker intuition to lean on.
Age in the past: tenía X años
To say how old someone was at a past moment, Spanish uses the imperfect of tener: tenía X años. The preterite tuvo X años either sounds bizarre or shifts the meaning to "turned X years old" — a change of state, not a description.
Tenía quince años cuando me cambié de instituto.
I was fifteen when I changed schools.
Mi padre tenía treinta y dos años cuando nací yo.
My father was thirty-two when I was born.
Cuando empezó la pandemia, mi hija tenía tres años; ahora ya va al cole.
When the pandemic started, my daughter was three; now she's already at school.
¿Cuántos años tenías cuando te mudaste a Madrid?
How old were you when you moved to Madrid?
Why is the imperfect obligatory? Because tener X años describes an ongoing state that lasts a full year — being fifteen isn't a punctual event, it's a condition that holds for the whole year between your fifteenth and sixteenth birthdays. The preterite would treat that condition as a single bounded event, which forces an odd reading.
In fact, tuve X años exists but means something specific:
The same imperfect-is-obligatory rule applies in the vosotros form, which is teníais:
¿Cuántos años teníais cuando empezasteis el colegio? Yo tenía cinco.
How old were you guys when you started school? I was five.
That sentence captures two of the most peninsular features of the construction: teníais (vosotros imperfect of tener, accent on í) and empezasteis (vosotros preterite of empezar, the event of starting school).
Time of day: eran las tres
Time of day in the past takes the imperfect of ser — and almost always in the plural eran, because Spanish treats clock times as plurals (las dos, las tres, las cuatro…). The only singular is era la una.
Eran las ocho y media cuando salimos de casa.
It was half past eight when we left the house.
Era la una de la madrugada y todavía no había vuelto.
It was one in the morning and he still hadn't come back.
Eran casi las tres de la tarde cuando por fin me llamó.
It was almost three in the afternoon when he finally called me.
Cuando llegamos al restaurante, eran las nueve en punto.
When we arrived at the restaurant, it was nine o'clock on the dot.
Why imperfect and not preterite? Same reason as age: a time of day is a state that holds across a span (the entire minute of "eight thirty," the entire range of "around three"), not a punctual event. Fueron las tres cuando llegó is not Spanish — natives would either reject it or reanalyse it as ungrammatical. The fixed form is always era / eran.
The plural-vs-singular agreement matters: era la una (1:00), eran las dos / las tres / las cuatro (everything else). This is the same pattern as the present (es la una vs son las dos), simply transposed into the imperfect.
Date in the past: era 5 de mayo
Dates in the past also use the imperfect of ser, this time always in the third-person singular era:
Era 25 de diciembre y toda la familia estaba reunida en casa de mis padres.
It was December 25th and the whole family was gathered at my parents' house.
Era viernes por la tarde y la oficina estaba prácticamente vacía.
It was Friday afternoon and the office was practically empty.
Era 2008, en plena crisis económica, y nadie tenía trabajo.
It was 2008, right in the middle of the financial crisis, and nobody had a job.
The construction reads like a stage direction: it sets the temporal backdrop against which the rest of the scene unfolds. The preterite fue would close off the date as a bounded event — natural in some constructions (El año pasado fue duro, "Last year was tough," treating the entire year as a completed unit) but wrong as a scene-setting device.
Weather as state: hacía frío
Weather in the past takes the imperfect when you're describing what the weather was like at a particular moment — its state, not its arrival or departure. Hacía frío, llovía, nevaba, hacía sol, hacía viento — all imperfect.
Hacía un frío de mil demonios y no llevaba abrigo.
It was bitterly cold and I wasn't wearing a coat.
Llovía a cántaros, así que cogimos un taxi.
It was raining cats and dogs, so we took a taxi.
Cuando salí de casa, hacía sol; cuando llegué al trabajo, ya estaba nublado.
When I left the house, it was sunny; when I arrived at work, it had already clouded over.
Aquel día nevaba sin parar y nadie quería salir a la calle.
That day it was snowing nonstop and nobody wanted to go outside.
The contrast with the preterite is sharp and important. Compare:
- Hacía frío. (Imperfect) — "It was cold" — describing the ambient state of the weather.
- Hizo frío. (Preterite) — "It got cold" or "It was cold (for the whole bounded period)" — viewing the cold weather as a completed unit.
The preterite is correct when you frame the weather as a finished episode with explicit boundaries: Hizo mucho frío durante toda la semana pasada ("It was very cold all last week" — the bounded week). For describing weather as a backdrop, the imperfect is the only natural choice.
Aquel invierno hizo mucho frío. Hubo días en los que nevaba sin parar.
That winter it was very cold. There were days when it snowed nonstop.
Look at that sentence: hizo (preterite, framing the whole winter as a closed period) and nevaba (imperfect, describing days as ongoing settings within that period). Both choices are right; they're doing different jobs.
Why these three categories cluster together
Age, time, and weather share a structural feature: they all describe states of being rather than events. Spanish encodes the state/event distinction grammatically in the imperfect/preterite contrast, and English doesn't. So these are exactly the cases where English speakers, who lack the native intuition, slip up most often.
The deeper logic is the same logic that drives the descriptive imperfect more broadly (see the previous page): the imperfect treats the predicate as the backdrop against which the action of the sentence unfolds. Age, clock time, dates, and weather are almost always backdrops — the things that frame the foreground events of the narrative. Even the rare preterites for these categories (hizo frío toda la semana) only work when the whole span itself becomes the bounded event.
A combined scene
Real Spanish narrative weaves all three together with the rest of the descriptive imperfect:
Era diciembre, hacía un frío seco y eran casi las nueve cuando salí del trabajo. Yo tenía veintidós años y todavía no sabía conducir, así que esperaba el autobús con los pies medio congelados.
It was December, it was bitterly cold and it was nearly nine when I left work. I was twenty-two and still didn't know how to drive, so I was waiting for the bus with my feet half frozen.
Five descriptive imperfects (era, hacía, eran, tenía, sabía, esperaba) and one event-marking preterite (salí). The scene is set richly; the action moves once. This is the rhythm of well-told Spanish past narrative.
Other state-of-the-world expressions
A few related constructions follow the same logic, even though they don't fit neatly into "age, time, weather":
Distance and location of objects as state:
El bar estaba a cinco minutos andando, así que fuimos a pie.
The bar was a five-minute walk away, so we went on foot.
Existence with había (the imperfect of hay):
Había mucha gente en la plaza, una banda tocaba y los niños corrían por todas partes.
There were lots of people in the square, a band was playing and the kids were running everywhere.
Both estaba (location) and había (existence) function as descriptive imperfects here. They share the same logic: states of the world that hold across the scene, not events that punctuate it.
Common mistakes
❌ Tuve veinte años cuando empecé la carrera.
Wrong: *tuve* is preterite — the meaning shifts to something like 'I had a 20-year-old (period)', which is nonsense. Age uses *tenía*.
✅ Tenía veinte años cuando empecé la carrera.
Correct: I was twenty when I started my degree.
❌ Fueron las cinco cuando llegué a casa.
Wrong: time-of-day in the past is always *eran* (or *era* for one o'clock), never *fueron*.
✅ Eran las cinco cuando llegué a casa.
Correct: It was five when I got home.
❌ Hizo mucho frío cuando salí de casa esta mañana.
Misleading: the preterite implies the cold is now framed as a completed unit, which is odd for a moment-by-moment description. For the ambient state, use the imperfect.
✅ Hacía mucho frío cuando salí de casa esta mañana.
Correct: It was very cold when I left the house this morning.
❌ Fue 25 de diciembre y la calle estaba decorada con luces.
Wrong: *fue* closes off the date as a bounded event — not how you set a scene. Use *era*.
✅ Era 25 de diciembre y la calle estaba decorada con luces.
Correct: It was December 25th and the street was decorated with lights.
❌ Llovió todo el día cuando llegué a Galicia y no pude ver nada.
Mixed: *llovió todo el día* (preterite + bounded duration) actually works — the whole day is framed as the bounded unit. The error is contextual: this style sounds more natural with the imperfect when narrating a moment-by-moment scene. *Llovía todo el día* fits a descriptive narration better.
✅ Llovía todo el día cuando llegué a Galicia y no pude ver nada.
Correct (descriptive style): It was raining all day when I got to Galicia and I couldn't see anything.
❌ ¿Cuántos años tuvisteis cuando vinisteis a vivir a Madrid?
Wrong: age is always in the imperfect. The vosotros form is *teníais*, not *tuvisteis*.
✅ ¿Cuántos años teníais cuando vinisteis a vivir a Madrid?
Correct: How old were you guys when you came to live in Madrid?
Key takeaways
- Age in the past uses the imperfect of tener: tenía X años. The preterite tuvo shifts the meaning or sounds wrong.
- Time of day uses the imperfect of ser: eran las dos (plural) or era la una (singular). Fueron las dos is ungrammatical for time-of-day.
- Dates use the imperfect: era 5 de mayo, era viernes, era 2008. The preterite would close off the date as a bounded unit.
- Weather as state uses the imperfect: hacía frío, llovía, nevaba, hacía sol. The preterite is only correct when the weather itself is framed as a bounded episode (hizo frío toda la semana).
- All three categories share a logic: they describe states, not events. The imperfect is the obligatory form for states.
- Peninsular vosotros forms in these constructions: teníais (age) — eran/era don't conjugate by person — and weather verbs are impersonal, so for "you guys were cold" Spanish uses teníais frío (literally "you guys had cold"), not anything with hacía, which only describes the weather itself.
- These three categories are a high-yield place to look when revising past narration: even advanced learners get them wrong by importing the English collapse of preterite/imperfect into a single past tense.
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