Breakdown of El alcalde explicó dónde construirían el puente.
dónde
where
explicar
to explain
construir
to build
el puente
the bridge
Questions & Answers about El alcalde explicó dónde construirían el puente.
Why does dónde have an accent mark if this isn't a question?
It is an indirect question. The sentence doesn't have question marks, but dónde still acts as an interrogative word pointing to a specific but initially unknown location. In Spanish, words like qué, quién, cómo, and dónde always keep their accent marks in indirect questions.
Why is the conditional tense (construirían) used here for "would build"?
This is an example of reported speech shifting the tense. When the mayor originally spoke, he likely used the future tense to say where they "will build" (construirán). Because the main verb of this sentence is in the past (explicó), that future action shifts to the conditional (construirían) to express a future event from a past perspective.
The translation says "they would build," but couldn't construirían also mean "you all would build"?
Is there a strict rule for the gender of nouns ending in -e like puente?