Breakdown of Hacía cinco días que yo miraba la inmensidad del mar.
yo
I
mirar
to look at / to watch
el día
the day
del
from the / of the
Questions & Answers about Hacía cinco días que yo miraba la inmensidad del mar.
Why do we use hacía and miraba here instead of a past perfect translation for 'had been looking'?
In English, we use the past perfect continuous to describe an action that started in the past and continued up to a certain past moment. In Spanish, you express this by taking the present tense duration formula and shifting it into the imperfect. So, hace plus a time expression plus que plus the present tense becomes hacía plus a time expression plus que plus the imperfect tense. Here, hacía cinco días que yo miraba shows the looking started five days prior and was still happening at that moment in the story.
Could I put the time expression at the end of the sentence instead?
What would it mean if I used the preterite miré instead of the imperfect miraba?
If you said Hacía cinco días que yo miré, it would completely change the meaning of the sentence. Using the preterite means the action is viewed as completed in the past, so it translates to 'It had been five days since I looked'. Because you want to convey that you were still actively looking at the sea for those five days, you must use the ongoing imperfect tense miraba.
Is the pronoun yo strictly necessary before miraba?