Breakdown of ¿Qué cultivaban los campesinos cuando llovía bastante?
qué
what
llover
to rain
bastante
quite / enough
cuando
when (statement)
Questions & Answers about ¿Qué cultivaban los campesinos cuando llovía bastante?
Why are both cultivaban and llovía in the imperfect tense?
Because this sentence is asking about a past habit or repeated situation. The phrase cuando llovía sets up a recurring condition (meaning 'whenever it rained'), and cultivaban describes what they routinely used to do during those times. Using the imperfect for both verbs shows that these actions happened repeatedly together in the past.
Why is the subject los campesinos placed after the verb cultivaban?
Who is the subject of llovía?
Nobody! Just like in English when we say 'it rained,' Spanish uses llover (to rain) as an impersonal verb. It is always conjugated in the third-person singular (llovía) because there is no specific person or thing doing the raining.