Question 1

Why do we use comía here instead of comió?

Accepted Answer

comía is the imperfect tense of the verb comer (to eat). We use the imperfect here because it describes a habit or a continuous state in the past. He consistently avoided meat over a period of time (en esa época), rather than just not eating it once as a single completed event.

Question 2

Since comía can mean "I used to eat" or "he used to eat", how do we know which one it is?

Accepted Answer

For regular -er and -ir verbs in the imperfect tense, the "I" form and the "he/she/it" form both end in -ía. Here, the subject is explicitly stated as mi abuelo (my grandfather), so we know it means "he". If the subject was left out and the context wasn't clear, you would need to add the pronoun yo or él to avoid confusion.

Question 3

Why is there no "the" before carne? Shouldn't it be la carne?

Accepted Answer

In Spanish, just like in English, you often leave out the article when talking about an unspecified amount of an uncountable noun as a general category. Because he did not eat meat in general, rather than a specific piece of meat, we simply say no comía carne.

Question 4

Does época always mean a huge historical era?

Accepted Answer

Not necessarily! While it translates to "era" or "epoch", Spanish speakers frequently use época to just mean a "time" or "period" in someone's life. So en esa época is a very natural and common way to say "at that time" or "back then".

En esa época, mi abuelo no comía carne.

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