Learn Hardcore Spanish (Latin America): La autopista está vacía esta noche; la recorreremos rápido. - The highway is empty tonight; we will travel it quickly.

Autopista means “highway” or “motorway.” It’s a limited-access, usually multi-lane road designed for fast traffic—often with tolls in Latin America. Carretera, by contrast, is a more general word for “road” and can refer to two-lane routes that pass through towns, with intersections and varying speed limits.

Why is the adjective vacía feminine instead of masculine?

In Spanish, adjectives must agree in gender and number with the nouns they describe. Autopista is a feminine noun (most nouns ending in –a are feminine), so the adjective takes the feminine form vacía rather than the masculine vacío.

Why is está used instead of es for vacía?

Spanish has two verbs for “to be”: ser and estar. Estar is used for temporary states or conditions (like being empty tonight), hence está vacía. Ser (so es vacía) would imply a permanent characteristic, which doesn’t fit here.

Why doesn’t esta in esta noche have an accent mark (ésta)?

In modern Spanish orthography, demonstrative adjectives such as esta (meaning “this”) are not written with an accent, even though they used to be distinguished from the pronoun ésta. Here esta modifies noche, so no accent is needed.

Could esta noche appear at the beginning of the sentence?

Yes. You can say Esta noche la autopista está vacía…. Spanish allows flexible word order; placing esta noche at the front emphasizes the time. The meaning stays the same.

What is the function of la before recorreremos, and what does it refer to?

La is a direct‐object pronoun replacing la autopista (feminine, singular). In conjugated verbs like recorreremos (future tense), object pronouns precede the verb: la recorreremos means “we will go over it” (i.e., the highway).

What does recorreremos mean, and how is the future tense formed here?

Recorreremos is the first-person-plural (we) simple future of recorrer (“to travel along,” “to cover,” “to go through”). In Spanish, the simple future is formed by adding endings (é, ás, á, emos, éis, án) directly to the infinitive: recorrer + emos → recorreremos.

Why is rápido used instead of rápidamente?

Both mean “quickly,” but rápido is commonly used in everyday speech as an adverb. Rápidamente is the more formal adverbial form. In casual contexts like driving, speakers often prefer rápido.

What is the purpose of the semicolon (;) in this sentence?

A semicolon links two closely related independent clauses. Here it connects “the highway is empty tonight” with “we’ll go over it quickly,” indicating a strong relationship without a conjunction like y (“and”).

Could I rephrase the future idea with vamos a instead of the simple future?

Yes. You could say la vamos a recorrer rápido or vamos a recorrerla rápido. This periphrastic future (ir + a + infinitive) is very common in spoken Spanish and carries the same meaning: “we are going to travel along it quickly.”