Learn Spanish (Spain): ¿Quién buscó el alojamiento el año pasado? - Who looked for the accommodation last year?

¿Quién buscó el alojamiento el año pasado?

Who looked for the accommodation last year?

Breakdown of ¿Quién buscó el alojamiento el año pasado?

Questions & Answers about ¿Quién buscó el alojamiento el año pasado?

Why is buscó in the he/she form if we do not know who did it?

When asking who did something using quién, Spanish treats it grammatically like a third-person singular subject (he, she, or it). That is why we use buscó. If you were expecting a plural answer, you would use quiénes buscaron.

I thought the verb buscar had a spelling change in the past tense?

It does, but only when saying I looked! Because buscar ends in -car, the I form changes to busqué to keep the hard k sound. However, the he/she/it form used here (buscó) does not need a spelling change because the letter c already makes a hard sound before the letter o.

Why do we need el before año pasado?

In Spanish, you generally need to use the definite article (el or la) with specific time expressions like last year (el año pasado) or next week (la semana que viene). English just says last year, but Spanish literally says the past year.

Is the word alojamiento only used for hotels?

No, alojamiento is a broad term for any kind of accommodation or lodging. It can refer to a hotel, a hostel, a vacation rental, or an apartment. If you were talking about looking for a specific room, you would use la habitación.