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Questions & Answers about La votación tiene lugar hoy.
What does tener lugar mean in this sentence?
Tener lugar is a fixed expression meaning to take place, to happen, or to be held.
So in La votación tiene lugar hoy, you should understand tiene lugar as one unit, not word by word.
- tener = to have
- lugar = place
But together, tener lugar does not literally mean to have place in normal English. It is just the Spanish idiom for to take place.
Why is it tiene lugar and not toma lugar?
Because Spanish uses tener lugar as the normal expression here, not tomar lugar.
English says take place, so learners often try to copy that structure and say tomar lugar, but that is usually not the natural choice in standard Spanish for happen / take place.
Use:
- La votación tiene lugar hoy. = The vote takes place today.
Not normally:
- La votación toma lugar hoy.
This is a good example of why translating word for word from English can be misleading.
Why is the verb tiene singular?