Question 1

Why use la cual here instead of la que?

Accepted Answer

While you technically could use la que, la cual is strongly preferred after longer, multi-word prepositional phrases like en la cumbre de. It sounds more formal and does a better job of clearly pointing back to the original noun across a longer distance.

Question 2

Why is it la cual instead of el cual? Doesn't it come right after cumbre?

Accepted Answer

The relative pronoun has to match the gender and number of the noun it actually replaces (its antecedent). Here, it refers all the way back to la montaña (feminine), not la cumbre. The phrase essentially means "on the summit of the mountain".

Question 3

Could I use cuyo/cuya to translate "of which" here?

Accepted Answer

Yes! A very natural and common alternative in written Spanish is to use the relative possessive adjective cuya (whose). You could say en cuya cumbre había una cabaña (literally, "on whose summit there was a cabin").

Question 4

Why are veía and había in the imperfect tense instead of the preterite?

Accepted Answer

Both verbs describe a continuous background state, which is how you set the scene in the past. You are describing what you were looking at (veía) and what existed there at the time (había), rather than reporting a sudden, completed event.

Veía la montaña, en la cumbre de la cual había una cabaña.

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