Learn Spanish (Latin America): A uno le duele la espalda por sacar mucha piedra. - One's back hurts from removing a lot of stone.

Verbs like doler (to hurt) work like gustar. The body part (la espalda) is the actual subject of the sentence, and the person experiencing the pain is the indirect object. To make this impersonal, we use a uno (to one) along with the matching indirect object pronoun le.

If a woman is speaking, should she say a una instead of a uno?

She definitely can! When a female speaker uses this generic structure to talk about a shared human experience that includes herself, she will often say una. However, uno is also widely used by women as a default, gender-neutral impersonal pronoun.

Why is it la espalda instead of su espalda if the English translation implies possession?

In Spanish, you almost always use the definite article (la) for body parts rather than a possessive pronoun (su) when the owner is already clear. Because we already established who is feeling the pain with the indirect object a uno le, adding a possessive would sound unnatural.

Why does the sentence use por sacar to express the cause of the pain?