Learn Spanish (Latin America): El frente de la guerra estaba lejos.

El frente de la guerra estaba lejos.

The war front was far away.

Breakdown of El frente de la guerra estaba lejos.

from / of

estar

to be (location/state)

Questions & Answers about El frente de la guerra estaba lejos.

Why is it el frente instead of la frente?

In Spanish, some words completely change meaning depending on their gender. La frente means the forehead. El frente is used for a military front (as in this sentence) or a weather front.

The lesson is about the passive voice with ser. Why does this sentence use estar (estaba) instead of ser?

This sentence isn't actually in the passive voice because no action is being done to the subject. Instead, it describes where something was located. Spanish always uses estar for physical locations, even in the past, which is why we see estaba here instead of a past tense form of ser.

Why use the imperfect tense estaba rather than the preterite estuvo?

The imperfect tense is used to set the scene or describe an ongoing state in the past. The war front being far away is a background description without a clear beginning or end, so estaba is the natural choice.

If the subject was plural, would lejos change to match it?

No. Lejos (far) is an adverb, and adverbs don't have gender or number. Because it describes the verb (where the front was) rather than modifying the noun itself, it stays exactly the same no matter what the subject is.