When you want to correct a misunderstanding or highlight a specific detail—like exactly who leaked a story or where a scandal started—you can use a cleft sentence. In English, this looks like "It was the journalist who..." or "It is the figures that...".
In Spanish, build these by combining a form of the verb ser (to be), the detail you want to emphasize, and a relative word (like quien, el que, or donde).
Emphasizing people and things
To highlight a person or an object, use ser + the person/thing + a relative pronoun. The verb ser must match both the tense of the event (e.g., fue for the past, es or son for the present) and the number/person of the emphasized element.
If you are emphasizing a person, use quien (who) or quienes (who, plural):
| It was the journalist who mentioned it yesterday. | Fue el periodista quien lo mencionó ayer. |
| It was I who mentioned the true figure. | Fui yo quien mencionó la cifra verdadera. |
When emphasizing an object or concept, use el que, la que, los que, or las que to match its gender and number:
| It was the headline that had started the scandal. | Fue el titular el que había empezado el escándalo. |
| It is the figures that matter to us now. | Son las cifras las que nos importan ahora. |
Emphasizing places
To emphasize where something happened, use ser + the location + the relative adverb donde (where) or adonde (to where).
Include necessary prepositions (like en or a) right after the verb ser:
| It was in the newsroom where they clarified the misunderstanding. | Fue en la redacción donde aclararon el malentendido. |
| It was to the newsroom that they sent the statement. | Fue a la redacción adonde mandaron el comunicado. |