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Visité a mis parientes hace un año.

Visité a mis parientes hace un año.
I visited my relatives a year ago.
From Lesson 108:Time ago (hace)·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about Visité a mis parientes hace un año.

Why does hace mean 'ago' here instead of 'it makes'?
In Spanish, the verb hacer is used to build certain time expressions. When you put hace before an amount of time like un año, it translates to 'ago'. So, hace un año simply means 'a year ago'.
Could I put hace un año at the beginning of the sentence?
Yes! You can absolutely say Hace un año visité a mis parientes. Placing the time expression at the beginning or the end of the sentence is perfectly natural and means exactly the same thing.
Why is the verb visité in the preterite tense?
The phrase hace un año tells us this action happened at a specific, completed point in the past. Completed past actions are the main trigger for the preterite tense, which gives us visité (I visited).
Why is there an a right after visité?
This is the 'personal a'. In Spanish, whenever the direct object (the noun receiving the action) is a person, you must put the word a right before it. Because you are visiting your relatives (people), you need the a before mis parientes.
Does the word parientes mean 'parents'?
No, this is a classic 'false friend' (a word that looks like an English word but has a different meaning). Parientes means 'relatives' in general. If you specifically want to say 'parents', you need to use the word padres.

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