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El embarque ya había cerrado.

El embarque ya había cerrado.
Boarding had already closed.
From Lesson 170:Sequencing past events·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about El embarque ya había cerrado.

Why use había cerrado instead of just cerró?
The past perfect (using the imperfect of haber plus a past participle) translates to "had closed". It is used to show that an action was completed before another past event. Here, it implies the boarding closed before the speaker even got to the airport gate.
Can I put ya between había and cerrado, like we do in English with "had already closed"?
No, in Spanish you can never separate the auxiliary verb (haber) and the past participle (cerrado). Words like ya (already) or siempre (always) must go before the entire verb phrase, as in this sentence, or sometimes at the very end.
Why isn't it se había cerrado? Doesn't the airline close the boarding?
You can actually say se había cerrado (it had been closed) using the passive reflexive, but it is very common in Spanish to use cerrar without it here. This means the subject itself just "closes", exactly like the English translation "boarding had closed".

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