Breakdown of La multitud abarrotó la acera antes de que vendieran los zapatos cotizados.
de
from / of
el zapato
the shoe
que
that / than
vender
to sell
la acera
the sidewalk
antes
before / earlier
la multitud
the crowd
cotizado
sought-after
abarrotar
to pack / to cram (to overfill a space)
Questions & Answers about La multitud abarrotó la acera antes de que vendieran los zapatos cotizados.
Why is vendieran in the imperfect subjunctive instead of the past tense?
The main action (abarrotó) happened in the past, but at that exact moment, the selling of the shoes had not yet occurred. Because antes de que introduces an action that is in the anticipated future relative to a past event, Spanish requires the imperfect subjunctive (vendieran).
Could we use the infinitive and say antes de vender instead?
We use antes de plus an infinitive only when the subject is the same for both actions. In this sentence, the crowd packed the sidewalk, but a different group (the shop workers) sold the shoes. Because the subject changes, you must use antes de que followed by a conjugated subjunctive verb.
How does cotizados mean sought-after if cotizar means to quote a price?
While the verb cotizar does mean to quote or value financially, the past participle cotizado is frequently used as an adjective to describe something that is highly valued, popular, or in extremely high demand.
Why does abarrotó take a singular conjugation when a crowd is made up of many people?
In Spanish, collective nouns like multitud (crowd), gente (people), and equipo (team) are grammatically singular, so they take singular verbs even though they refer to a plural concept.
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