Learn Spanish (Spain): Ayer por la tarde estábamos evacuando la oficina. - Yesterday afternoon, we were evacuating the office.

Ayer por la tarde estábamos evacuando la oficina.

Yesterday afternoon, we were evacuating the office.

Breakdown of Ayer por la tarde estábamos evacuando la oficina.

estar

to be (location/state)

la oficina

the office

por

for / by / through / in (during a part of the day)

la tarde

the afternoon / the evening

Questions & Answers about Ayer por la tarde estábamos evacuando la oficina.

Why do we use estábamos evacuando here instead of the simple past evacuamos?

Estábamos evacuando is the past continuous tense. We use the imperfect tense of estar (estábamos) plus the gerund (evacuando) to talk about an action that was ongoing or in progress in the past. It translates to 'we were evacuating'. If you used the simple past evacuamos, it would mean the action was an isolated, completed event ('we evacuated').

How do you form the word evacuando?

Evacuando is the gerund (the '-ing' form) of the verb evacuar (to evacuate). For regular '-ar' verbs, you drop the '-ar' ending and add -ando.

Why is it por la tarde instead of en la tarde?

In Spain, it is standard to use por when talking about general parts of the day, like por la mañana (in the morning) or por la tarde (in the afternoon). You might hear en la tarde in Latin America, but por la tarde is the natural choice for European Spanish.

Why does estábamos have a written accent mark?

In Spanish, words that have their spoken stress on the third-to-last syllable always get a written accent mark. Because we naturally emphasize the 'tá' in es-tá-ba-mos, it requires the written accent.