Learn Spanish (Latin America): Él dormía en un hotelucho cuando llegó la bancarrota. - He was sleeping in a cheap hotel when bankruptcy arrived.

The suffix -ucho (or -ucha for feminine words) is pejorative, meaning it expresses a negative evaluation or contempt. By attaching it to hotel, the speaker isn't just saying it's a cheap hotel, but a rundown, low-quality, or dingy one—essentially calling it a dump.

Why do we use both the imperfect tense (dormía) and the preterite tense (llegó) here?

This sentence is a classic example of an ongoing background action being interrupted by a sudden event. Él dormía (imperfect) sets the scene of what he was in the middle of doing (he was sleeping), while llegó (preterite) describes the specific, one-time event that happened during that time (arrived).

Why is the definite article la used before bancarrota if English just says 'bankruptcy'?

In Spanish, you generally need definite articles (el, la, los, las) before abstract nouns or general concepts when they are the subject of the verb. Spanish requires la bancarrota to talk about bankruptcy as a general concept, or to refer to the specific bankruptcy event that affected him.

Could I drop the pronoun Él and just start the sentence with Dormía?