When you drop your passport or lose your luggage, it is nice not to take the full blame. In Spanish, you can use the accidental se construction to describe unintentional events, suggesting that the accident just happened to you.
The structure is: se + indirect object pronoun (me, te, le, nos, os, les) + verb.
In this construction, the person involved is the indirect object. The grammatical subject of the sentence is the item involved in the mishap, so the verb is always conjugated in the third person singular or plural to agree with the item.
To clarify who the indirect object is—especially with le or les—you can add a + [person].
| At customs, the tourist forgot his visa. | En la aduana, al turista se le olvidó el visado. |
| During the layover, our luggage got lost. | Durante la escala, se nos ha perdido el equipaje. |
| Before checking in, I dropped my passport. | Antes de facturar, se me ha caído el pasaporte. |
You will hear this structure used frequently with verbs for clumsy mishaps, such as spilling (derramar), staining (manchar), breaking (romper), or burning (quemar).
| My coffee spilled at the airport. | Se me ha derramado el café en el aeropuerto. |
| My shirt got stained with coffee. | Se me ha manchado la camisa de café. |
| My suitcase broke during the boarding. | Se me rompió la maleta durante el embarque. |
| The girl's dinner burned because of the call. | A la chica se le quemó la cena por la llamada. |
If the item involved in the accident is plural, the verb must also be plural.
| Their documents got misplaced at customs. | En la aduana se les han extraviado los documentos. |
