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Se le arrugó el pantalón al sentarse encima de la cama.

Se le arrugó el pantalón al sentarse encima de la cama.
His pants got wrinkled when he sat on top of the bed.
From Lesson 386:Accidental events (se me, se te...)·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about Se le arrugó el pantalón al sentarse encima de la cama.

Why is it se le arrugó instead of just saying he wrinkled his pants?
This uses the accidental se structure, which removes the active blame from the person. Instead of saying he actively wrinkled them, the structure se + indirect object pronoun (le) + verb (arrugó) translates roughly to 'the pants wrinkled themselves to him.' It highlights that it was completely involuntary.
The translation says 'his pants', but I don't see sus pantalones in the Spanish sentence. How does that work?
In Spanish, when talking about clothing or body parts involved in an action, we typically use the definite article (el or la) instead of a possessive adjective like sus. The indirect object pronoun le already tells us who was affected by the wrinkling (him), making sus redundant.
Why is pantalón singular here when the English translation says 'pants'?
In Spanish, you can use either the singular el pantalón or the plural los pantalones to refer to a single pair of pants. Both are correct and widely used, but since el pantalón is singular here, the verb arrugó must also be singular to match it as the subject of the clause.
Why does the sentence use al sentarse instead of cuando se sentó?
The structure al + infinitive is a very natural and efficient way to say 'upon doing [something]' or 'when [doing something].' You absolutely could say cuando se sentó, but al sentarse is extremely common in Spanish to link two events happening at the exact same time.
Are the two se words in this sentence doing the same thing?
No, they serve different purposes! The first one (se le arrugó) is the accidental se that marks an involuntary event. The second one attached to sentarse is a standard pronominal pronoun (often called a reflexive pronoun) required simply because the verb for 'to sit down' is sentarse.

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