La chica de la gasolinera miró el neumático y dijo que podíamos seguir sin problema.

In Spanish, articles are used more often than in English. La chica means the girl / the young woman.

Saying just chica without an article would usually sound incomplete in this kind of sentence. Spanish normally wants a determiner here: la chica, una chica, esa chica, etc.

Literally, de la gasolinera means of/from the petrol station, but in natural English here it usually means something like:

• the girl at the petrol station
• the girl from the petrol station

It identifies which girl we are talking about. In Spanish, de is often used this way to describe where someone is associated with.

Both are possible, but they are not always used in exactly the same way.

• gasolinera = petrol station / gas station
• estación de servicio = service station, a slightly broader or sometimes more formal term

In everyday speech in Spain, gasolinera is very common and natural.

Miró is the preterite form of mirar, and it shows a completed action in the past:

• miró = she looked

Here, the sentence tells us that she looked at the tyre as a finished event, so the preterite is the normal choice.

If you said miraba, that would be the imperfect, which usually suggests an ongoing, repeated, or background action:

• miraba = she was looking / used to look

That would not fit as well here.

The accent mark distinguishes it from miro:

• miro = I look
• miró = he/she looked

So the accent is important because it changes both the pronunciation and the meaning.

Not exactly.

• neumático = tyre
• rueda = wheel

In everyday conversation, some people may use rueda loosely when talking about the tyre area, but strictly speaking, neumático refers to the rubber tyre itself.

In Spain, neumático is a normal and accurate word here.

Because neumático is a masculine noun in Spanish, so it takes el in the singular:

• el neumático
• los neumáticos

Grammatical gender in Spanish does not always match anything logical in English, so this is just something to learn with the noun.

Both are possible, but they are structured differently.

• dijo que podíamos seguir = she said that we could continue
• dijo: “podéis seguir” = direct quotation, more like she said: “you can continue”

The sentence uses reported speech, so Spanish uses dijo que... just like English uses said that...

Podíamos is the imperfect of poder:

• podíamos = we could / we were able to

Here it reports what she said was possible at that moment: that we could continue.

Why not the others?

• pudimos = we managed to / we were able to as a completed event
  That would sound more like the action was already successfully carried out.
• podríamos = we could / we would be able to in a conditional sense
  That would sound more hypothetical.

So podíamos seguir fits the meaning best: she said it was possible for us to continue.

Because after a conjugated modal verb like poder, Spanish normally uses an infinitive:

• podíamos seguir = we could continue
• podíamos salir = we could leave
• podíamos esperar = we could wait

This works very much like English: could continue, could leave, could wait.

Spanish often omits subject pronouns because the verb ending already shows who the subject is.

• podíamos already tells you it means we could

So nosotros podíamos seguir is possible, but unnecessary unless you want emphasis or contrast.

Sin problema means without a problem / with no problem.

Spanish often uses this expression in the singular as a set phrase. It sounds very natural.

You may also hear:

• sin problemas = without problems
• no hay problema = there’s no problem

In this sentence, sin problema means that it was safe or fine to continue.

Yes, in this sentence they are very close in meaning.

• seguir = to continue / to keep going
• continuar = to continue

Seguir is very common and natural in everyday Spanish. It can also suggest literally carrying on with the journey, which fits this context well.

Y simply means and. It links the two completed past actions:

• miró el neumático
• dijo que podíamos seguir sin problema

So the structure is:

She looked at the tyre and said that we could continue without any problem.

Yes. Although chica literally often means girl, in many contexts it can also mean young woman.

In a sentence like this, la chica de la gasolinera could easily refer to a female employee or attendant, and English might translate it as:

• the girl at the petrol station
• the young woman at the petrol station

The exact age is not always important; it depends on context.

A rough guide would be:

La chica de la gasolinera miró el neumático y dijo que podíamos seguir sin problema.

Some useful pronunciation notes for Spain:

• ch in chica sounds like English ch
• g in gasolinera is a hard g because it comes before a
• neumático starts with neu-, pronounced roughly neh-oo together
• dijo has a soft j, like the strong h sound in many Spanish accents
• podíamos has stress on -í-
• seguir has a hard g sound because of the u in gui

If you want standard Peninsular pronunciation, c in words like hacer would sound like th, but there is no example of that sound in this sentence.