Breakdown of El edificio viejo fue demolido y el espacio está abandonado.
ser
to be
y
and
viejo
old
estar
to be (location/state)
Questions & Answers about El edificio viejo fue demolido y el espacio está abandonado.
Why do we use fue for the first part and está for the second?
Fue comes from ser and is used with the past participle (demolido) to talk about the action of the building being torn down. Está comes from estar and is used with a past participle (abandonado) to describe the resulting condition of the space right now.
Could we say el espacio es abandonado instead?
If you say el espacio es abandonado, you are using the passive voice to mean "the space is being abandoned" (focusing on the action happening right now). By using está abandonado, you show that the abandoning action is already over, and you are just describing the state the space was left in.
Do demolido and abandonado change depending on what they describe?
Yes! When past participles are used with ser (for actions) or estar (for states), they act like adjectives and must match the noun in gender and number. Since edificio and espacio are both singular masculine nouns, both participles end in -o. If we were talking about an old house (la casa vieja), it would be fue demolida and está abandonada.
Why is it fue demolido (preterite tense) instead of (imperfect tense)?