Questions & Answers about El rey no quiso dar la corona al príncipe.
Why does no quiso translate to "refused" instead of "didn't want"?
The verb querer usually means "to want". In the imperfect tense (no quería), it simply describes an ongoing state: he didn't want to. But in the preterite tense, it talks about a specific completed action. If someone "didn't want" to do something at the exact moment it was time to act, it means they "refused" to do it.
What would the sentence mean if we used the imperfect no quería instead?
Why is the preterite of querer so irregular here (quiso)?
Why is it al príncipe and not a el príncipe?
In Spanish, whenever the preposition a (to) is followed immediately by the masculine article el (the), they must combine into the contraction al. They are never written as two separate words unless El is part of a capitalized proper noun.