Breakdown of El año pasado, ellas decidieron viajar a España.
ellas
they (f)
viajar
to travel
el año
the year
España
Spain
a
to
pasado
past
decidir
to decide
Questions & Answers about El año pasado, ellas decidieron viajar a España.
How do we form the past tense for decidieron in this sentence?
Why does "Last year" translate to El año pasado with El at the beginning?
In Spanish, when you talk about specific points in time like "last year", "next week", or "on Monday", you almost always need to include a definite article (el or la). So, "last year" translates literally as "the past year": el año pasado.
Why is viajar left in its dictionary form instead of being conjugated?
When you have two verbs working together to express one combined idea—like "they decided to travel"—only the first verb gets conjugated. Decidieron tells us who did the action and when, so the second verb, viajar (to travel), stays in its full, unchanged dictionary form (the infinitive).
In English we say "decided to travel", so why is there no extra word for "to" between decidieron and viajar?
First, the "to" in "to travel" is already built directly into the Spanish infinitive viajar. Second, while a few Spanish verbs require a linking preposition before an infinitive (like empezar a, meaning "to start to"), the verb decidir does not. It connects directly to the next verb without any extra words.
Why do we use the preposition a before España?
The preposition a means "to" and is used to show motion or destination. Since viajar (to travel) is a verb of movement, we use a to connect it to the destination, España.
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