ELONIO
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El que descubrió el plagio fue el detective.

El que descubrió el plagio fue el detective.
The one who discovered the plagiarism was the detective.
From Lesson 415:Emphasizing the subject (el que, quien)·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about El que descubrió el plagio fue el detective.

Could I use quien instead of el que at the beginning of this sentence?
Yes, you could say Quien descubrió el plagio fue el detective. In these emphasizing sentences, el que and quien are often interchangeable. However, el que is generally more common in everyday spoken Spanish, while quien can sound a bit more formal.
If the detective were a woman, how would this sentence change?
You would change the initial pronoun to match the gender of the emphasized subject. It would become: La que descubrió el plagio fue la detective. Notice that the noun detective is used for both men and women, so we just change the articles to la to indicate she is female.
Why is fue in the preterite tense here rather than the imperfect (era)?
In this type of sentence structure, the verb ser usually matches the tense of the main action verb. Since the discovery was a completed past event (descubrió, in the preterite), we use the preterite fue to link it directly to the detective.
Is it possible to flip the order and put el detective at the beginning?
Yes, you can say El detective fue el que descubrió el plagio. Both versions are correct. However, starting with El que builds suspense by making the listener wait until the end of the sentence to find out who did it, which puts a much stronger spotlight on el detective.

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