Learn Spanish (Spain): En ese siglo no existía el tren. - In that century, the train did not exist.

En ese siglo no existía el tren.

In that century, the train did not exist.

Breakdown of En ese siglo no existía el tren.

no / not

in / on / by (means of transport) / about (after pensar)

el tren

the train

ese

that (m.sg., also esa, esos, esas, eso)

Questions & Answers about En ese siglo no existía el tren.

Why use the imperfect tense existía here instead of the simple past?

We use the imperfect tense to describe how things used to be or the general state of things in the past. Because 'not existing' was a continuous, ongoing state during that whole century, we use the imperfect existía rather than a completed action in the simple past.

Which ending rule makes existir become existía?

Existir is a regular -ir verb. To form the imperfect tense for regular -er and -ir verbs, you drop the ending and add -ía for the 'I', 'he', 'she', and 'it' forms. Here, the verb matches the subject el tren (it). Notice that the i in -ía always has an accent mark!

Why is the subject el tren at the very end of the sentence?

In Spanish, word order is much more flexible than in English. With verbs that describe existence or something happening, it is very common and natural to put the subject after the verb. Saying el tren no existía is also perfectly correct, but putting the verb first sounds very natural here.

I always mix up the words for 'this' and 'that'. Why use ese here?

Ese means 'that' for masculine nouns like siglo. If you wanted to say 'this century' (the one we are in right now), you would use este siglo. If you were talking about a century much further back in time, you could even use aquel siglo (that century way back then).