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Era el abuelo a quien le pedí que no malcriara a los niños.

Era el abuelo a quien le pedí que no malcriara a los niños.
He was the grandfather I asked not to spoil the children.
From Lesson 184:Past subjunctive triggers·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about Era el abuelo a quien le pedí que no malcriara a los niños.

Why is malcriara in the imperfect subjunctive here?
The verb pedir (to ask) expresses influence—you are trying to get someone to act. Because the main verb pedí is in a past tense (I asked), it triggers the past (imperfect) subjunctive in the following que clause. That is why we use que no malcriara (that he not spoil).
Why do we have the pronoun le right before pedí if we already said a quien?
In Spanish, it is very common and often required to use an indirect object pronoun even when the receiver of the action is explicitly stated. Here, le points right back to el abuelo a quien (the grandfather to whom). It functions as a redundant tag meaning "to him."
Why are there two different a's in this sentence (a quien and a los niños)?
They serve two different purposes. The first a goes with quien to mean "to whom" because you direct a request to someone. The second a in a los niños is the "personal a," which is a required preposition placed before any direct object that is a specific person or group of people.
How is the verb malcriara formed, and what does it literally mean?
Malcriara comes from the verb malcriar (to spoil). If you break it down, it is a direct combination of mal (badly) and criar (to raise or bring up). So, spoiling a child in Spanish is literally "raising them badly."

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