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El niño que jugaba en la calle es muy alto.

El niño que jugaba en la calle es muy alto.
The boy who used to play in the street is very tall.
From Lesson 143:The imperfect tense (-aba)·Spanish (Spain)

Questions & Answers about El niño que jugaba en la calle es muy alto.

Why does the sentence use jugaba instead of jugó?
Jugaba is the imperfect tense, which we use to talk about past habits or ongoing past actions. Here, it translates to "used to play" because it describes something the boy did regularly over time, rather than a single completed event like jugó would.
I thought jugar was a stem-changing verb. Why is there no stem change in jugaba?
You are right that jugar has a stem change in the present tense (like yo juego). However, stem changes do not happen in the imperfect tense. To form it, you just take the infinitive jugar, drop the -ar, and add the regular ending -aba for he, she, or it.
Why is que used to mean "who" here, instead of quién?
In Spanish, que is the most common connecting word and can mean "who", "which", or "that". When you are directly following a noun like el niño with no commas or prepositions in between, you almost always use que.
Is it normal to use a past tense verb (jugaba) and a present tense verb (es) in the same sentence?
Yes! This sentence describes two different timeframes. The boy playing in the street is a past habit, so we use the imperfect jugaba. But being very tall is a physical trait he has right now in the present, so we use the present tense es.

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