Breakdown of El periodista me preguntó cómo habían relatado el suceso.
cómo
how
me
to me / me (direct object)
preguntar
to ask
haber
(auxiliary) have
el periodista
the journalist
el suceso
the incident
relatar
to recount
Questions & Answers about El periodista me preguntó cómo habían relatado el suceso.
Wait, doesn't suceso mean "success"?
No, suceso is a false friend! It means an event, incident, or happening (related to the verb suceder, meaning to happen or occur). If you want to talk about "success" in Spanish, the word you need is éxito.
Why is habían relatado (had recounted) used here instead of a simple past tense?
This sentence is a great example of reported speech using the past perfect tense (pluscuamperfecto). Because the act of recounting the incident happened before the journalist asked about it, Spanish uses the past perfect to show this "past before the past."
Why does cómo have an accent mark if this sentence isn't a direct question?
Interrogative words like cómo, qué, and dónde always keep their accent marks in indirect questions. Even though the sentence is a statement with no question marks, the phrase starting with cómo represents the underlying question the journalist asked.
I thought words ending in "-a" were feminine. Why is it el periodista?
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