Learn Hardcore Spanish (Latin America): Nos apuramos para llegar a la estación a tiempo.

Literally, nos apuramos comes from apurarse, “to hurry (oneself), to rush.”
So nos apuramos literally is “we hurry ourselves,” but idiomatically it just means “we hurry” / “we are in a hurry” / “we rushed.”

Grammatically, nos apuramos (with no context) is ambiguous between:

Present tense: nos apuramos = we hurry / we are hurrying
Preterite (simple past): nos apuramos = we hurried

In a real conversation, context or time markers (like ayer, siempre, ahora) would tell you whether it’s present or past. The rest of the sentence (para llegar a la estación a tiempo) works fine for either.

Why do we need nos in nos apuramos? Could I just say apuramos?

You need nos because apurarse is being used as a reflexive verb here: apurarse = to hurry (oneself), to get a move on.

The basic pattern is:

yo me apuro – I hurry (I’m in a rush)
tú te apuras – you hurry
él/ella se apura – he/she hurries
nosotros nos apuramos – we hurry
ellos se apuran – they hurry

If you say apuramos without nos, it sounds incomplete or wrong in most contexts, because apuramos non-reflexive usually means “we use up / we finish / we exhaust (something)” rather than “we hurry.”
Example non-reflexive use:

Apuramos el café. – We finished / used up the coffee.

To talk about ourselves hurrying, you keep the nos.

What’s the difference between apurarse (as in nos apuramos) and apurar without the reflexive?

apurarse (reflexive):
- Meaning: to hurry, to rush, to get a move on
- Example: Nos apuramos para llegar a la estación a tiempo.
  We hurry to get to the station on time.
apurar (non-reflexive):
- Core meanings: to use up / to finish completely / to press / to worry someone
- Examples:
  - Apura el jugo. – Finish your juice (drink it up).
  - No me apures. – Don’t pressure/rush me.

So in your sentence, you want the reflexive meaning “we hurry”, so it must be nos apuramos, not just apuramos.

Could I say Tenemos prisa instead of Nos apuramos? Is there a difference?

Both are correct and common, and both can fit the sentence with a small change:

Tenemos prisa para llegar a la estación a tiempo.
Nos apuramos para llegar a la estación a tiempo.

Nuance:

Tener prisa = literally “to have hurry” → to be in a hurry.
- More neutral, very common everywhere.
Apurarse = to hurry (oneself), to get moving quickly.
- Often suggests more active effort or urgency: you’re actually rushing, not just “in a hurry” as a state.

In practice, they overlap a lot, and speakers often use them interchangeably in everyday speech.

Why is it para llegar and not por llegar?

In this sentence, para introduces a purpose or goal:

Nos apuramos para llegar a la estación a tiempo.
→ We hurry *in order to get to the station on time.*

Para + infinitive is the standard way to express “in order to do X.”
So:

para llegar = in order to arrive / to get there

If you used por llegar here, it would sound odd or wrong in most dialects. Por is normally not used to express purpose with an infinitive.

Why is it llegar a la estación and not llegar la estación?

With llegar, you almost always need the preposition a before the destination:

llegar a
- place = to arrive at / to get to a place

So:

llegar a la estación – to arrive at the station
llegar a casa – to arrive home
llegar a la escuela – to arrive at school

Saying llegar la estación (without a) is ungrammatical in standard Spanish. The preposition a is obligatory before the noun representing the place.

Why is it a tiempo and not something like en tiempo?

The fixed idiomatic expression in Spanish for “on time” is:

a tiempo = on time

Examples:

Llegamos a tiempo. – We arrive on time.
No llegué a tiempo. – I didn’t arrive on time.

You can see en tiempo in legal or very formal contexts, meaning roughly “within the time limit,” but in everyday language a tiempo is the natural, standard expression for “on time.”

Why is it la estación and not just estación? Can I drop the article?

In Spanish, definite nouns (like “the station”) normally require a definite article (el, la, los, las), much more consistently than in English.

So:

la estación = the station
el banco = the bank
la escuela = the school

In your sentence:

Nos apuramos para llegar a la estación a tiempo.
→ “We hurry to get to the station on time.”

You cannot say “…para llegar a estación…” in standard Spanish; it sounds incomplete or incorrect. You need the article la.

You only normally drop the article with proper names or certain fixed expressions (a casa, en casa), but estación here is a common noun, not a name, so it takes la.

Could this sentence mean “We hurried to get to the station on time” (past) as well as “We hurry…” (present)?

Yes. As written, Nos apuramos para llegar a la estación a tiempo can be interpreted as either:

Present: We hurry / we are hurrying to get to the station on time.
Preterite (simple past): We hurried to get to the station on time.

The form apuramos is the same for present and preterite in nosotros:

Present: nosotros apuramos
Preterite: nosotros apuramos

To make the past clearer, people often add a time word:

Ayer nos apuramos para llegar a la estación a tiempo.
Yesterday we hurried to get to the station on time.

If they want to make it clearly present, they might add something like ahora, siempre, etc.

Is Nos apuramos the only possible word order, or can nos move somewhere else?

With a conjugated verb in a simple sentence like yours, the reflexive pronoun must go before the verb:

✅ Nos apuramos para llegar…

You cannot say:

❌ Apuramos nos para llegar…

However, with infinitives and gerunds, you have options:

Before the conjugated verb:
- Nos vamos a apurar. – We are going to hurry.
- Nos estamos apurando. – We are hurrying.
Attached to the infinitive/gerund:
- Vamos a apurarnos.
- Estamos apurándonos.

In your exact sentence (present simple), the only correct position is before the verb: Nos apuramos…

Are there other verbs in Latin American Spanish that mean the same as apurarse here?

Yes, a couple of common alternatives:

apresurarse – to hurry, to hasten
- Nos apresuramos para llegar a la estación a tiempo.
darse prisa – to hurry (very common in Spain; also understood in Latin America)
- Nos damos prisa para llegar a la estación a tiempo.

In Latin America, apurarse and tener prisa are very common and natural. Apresurarse sounds a bit more formal or bookish. Darse prisa is heard but is more strongly associated with Peninsular (Spain) Spanish.

Is there any difference between Nos apuramos para llegar a la estación a tiempo and Nos apuramos para llegar a tiempo a la estación?

Both are grammatically correct and mean the same thing. The most natural order is usually:

Nos apuramos para llegar a la estación a tiempo.

Putting a tiempo right after the destination is the most common rhythm:

…llegar a la estación a tiempo.

If you say:

Nos apuramos para llegar a tiempo a la estación.

it still sounds fine, just a little less typical. Spanish tends to prefer keeping llegar a + place together: llegar a la estación, then adding a tiempo.

Could I leave out a tiempo? How else can I say “on time”?

Yes, you can leave it out if context makes it clear:

Nos apuramos para llegar a la estación.
We hurry to get to the station.

But you lose the specific idea of “on time.”

Other ways to express “on time / punctually”:

puntuales / puntualmente
- Nos apuramos para llegar puntuales a la estación.
  We hurry so we’ll get to the station on time / punctually.
a la hora (in some contexts, “at the set time”)
- Nos apuramos para llegar a la estación a la hora.
  (Used when there is a known scheduled time.)

The most direct, standard, and neutral option is still a tiempo.