Breakdown of Aunque mis padres están divorciados, tengo una buena relación con mi madrastra.
Questions & Answers about Aunque mis padres están divorciados, tengo una buena relación con mi madrastra.
Both aunque and pero can be translated as “but” in English sometimes, but they’re not interchangeable.
- aunque = although / even though, introduces a concession: “Despite the fact that…”
- pero = but, simply contrasts two ideas.
In this sentence:
- Aunque mis padres están divorciados, tengo una buena relación con mi madrastra.
= “Even though my parents are divorced, I have a good relationship with my stepmother.”
The speaker is emphasizing a surprising contrast: despite the divorce, the relationship with the stepmother is good. That’s exactly the job of aunque.
If you used pero:
- Mis padres están divorciados, pero tengo una buena relación con mi madrastra.
This is still correct and very natural, but it feels a bit less “concessive” and more like a plain contrast: “My parents are divorced, but I have a good relationship with my stepmother.”
So:
- aunque → “although / even though” (stronger sense of despite that)
- pero → “but” (more neutral contrast)
This is about ser vs estar.
- ser is used for essential, permanent characteristics or inherent identity.
- estar is used for temporary states, conditions, or the result of a previous action.
Divorciado is grammatically an adjective, but semantically it’s the result of an action (they got divorced), so Spanish usually treats it as a state resulting from an action, and that goes with estar:
- Mis padres están divorciados.
= “My parents are divorced” (they are in the state of being divorced)
Using son divorciados is grammatically possible, but it sounds odd or very marked, as if “being divorced” were part of their permanent identity or category, which is not how natives usually express this idea. In practice, people say:
- Está divorciado / divorciada / divorciados for “is divorced.”
Spanish uses grammatical gender, and when you have a mixed group (male + female), the default grammatical gender is masculine plural.
- mis padres = my parents
Even if one is your mother and one is your father, grammatically this is a mixed-gender group.
Therefore:
- padres → masculine plural noun
- Any adjective describing padres must also be masculine plural: divorciados
If it were only women (for example, mis madres in a same-sex couple), you would use the feminine plural:
- Mis madres están divorciadas.
Spanish often uses estar + past participle to describe the current result of a past action, not the action itself.
- Se divorciaron = “They got divorced” (past action)
- Están divorciados = “They are divorced” (present state / result)
In your sentence:
- Mis padres están divorciados.
Focuses on their current situation—right now, they are divorced.
You could also say:
- Aunque mis padres se divorciaron, tengo una buena relación con mi madrastra.
This shifts the focus more onto the event of divorcing rather than the ongoing state. Both can work, but están divorciados is very natural when talking about their present marital status.
Yes, aunque can take either indicative or subjunctive, and the choice changes the nuance.
- Aunque + indicative → introduces something the speaker presents as a fact.
- Aunque + subjunctive → introduces something hypothetical, unknown, or not affirmed as fact by the speaker.
In your sentence:
- Aunque mis padres están divorciados, tengo una buena relación con mi madrastra.
The speaker is stating a known fact: their parents are definitely divorced.
If you said:
- Aunque mis padres estén divorciados, tengo una buena relación con mi madrastra.
This could be interpreted as more hypothetical or not directly confirmed by the speaker, something like: “Even if my parents are (may be / were to be) divorced, I have a good relationship with my stepmother.” It sounds less natural here because we’re clearly talking about a real situation.
So for a real, known fact like this, están (indicative) is the standard choice.
Both are possible:
- Tengo una buena relación con mi madrastra.
- Tengo buena relación con mi madrastra.
The version with una (the indefinite article) is more common and more natural in this kind of sentence. In many contexts, Spanish tends to use un/una with nouns like relación when you qualify them:
- Tengo una mala relación con…
- Tenemos una relación muy cercana.
You can drop una:
- Tengo buena relación con mi madrastra.
This is understandable and not wrong, but it sounds a bit more clipped or telegraphic, and it’s less typical in everyday speech for this specific expression. So:
- Prefer: tengo una buena relación con…
The default position for adjectives in Spanish is indeed after the noun:
- una relación buena
However, many adjectives can also go before the noun. The position often changes the emphasis or nuance:
- Adjectives placed before the noun often express:
- A more subjective opinion or value judgment (good, bad, beautiful, awful)
- An inherent or expected quality
- Adjectives placed after the noun are more descriptive / neutral.
With relación, speakers almost always say:
- una buena relación
- una mala relación
Putting buena before relación sounds completely natural and is the typical, idiomatic order.
Una relación buena is grammatically correct but less usual in this set phrase; it might sound like you’re contrasting it with una relación mala in a more technical or descriptive way.
In Spanish, when you use a possessive adjective (mi, tu, su, nuestro, etc.) before a noun, you do not also use the definite article:
- ✅ mis padres = my parents
- ❌ los mis padres (incorrect in standard Spanish)
The possessive itself already does the job of specifying “my, your, his, etc.”, so adding el/la/los/las in front of it is redundant and ungrammatical in this position.
You can have article + possessive when the possessive comes after the noun (a different structure):
- los padres míos = literally “the parents of mine”
This sounds very emphatic or poetic; in normal speech you just say mis padres.
Yes, that is perfectly correct and natural:
- Aunque mis padres están divorciados, tengo una buena relación con mi madrastra.
- Tengo una buena relación con mi madrastra, aunque mis padres están divorciados.
Both mean the same thing. The difference is focus:
- Starting with aunque… highlights the contrast first: Despite this situation…
- Starting with tengo una buena relación… presents the positive fact first, and then adds the concession as extra information.
Native speakers use both orders freely depending on what they want to emphasize.
Madrastra means stepmother: the woman who is married to your father but is not your biological mother.
- madrastra = stepmother
- padrastro = stepfather
Historically, in some fairy tales and stories (in both English and Spanish), madrastra often appears as “the evil stepmother,” so the word can have negative associations in stories or stereotypes.
However, in real life, everyday speech, madrastra is just the neutral, standard term for “stepmother.” In your sentence:
- tengo una buena relación con mi madrastra
it is clearly positive, and nobody would hear an insult or negativity in the word itself.
Spanish places written accents on words that break the normal stress rules.
The normal rule for words ending in -n, -s, or vowel is that stress falls on the second-to-last syllable.
- relacion (without accent) ends in n, so by that rule, stress would be on -ción’s preceding syllable: re-la-cion → RE-la-cion.
But we actually pronounce it re-la-CIÓN, with stress on the last syllable. Because this breaks the normal rule, Spanish uses a written accent mark:
- relación (re-la-CIÓN)
So the accent mark is there purely to show where the stress goes.