Question 1

Why is there an a before mi hermana and another a before quien?

Accepted Answer

This sentence uses a cleft structure to add emphasis. Because the verb culparon (they blamed) requires the personal a when the direct object is a person, that a must be kept in the emphasis part. In Spanish, when the emphasized part has a preposition like a, it is generally repeated before the relative pronoun quien.

Question 2

Could I use la que instead of quien in this sentence?

Accepted Answer

Yes! In these emphasis sentences, you can often swap quien for el que, la que, los que, or las que depending on who you are talking about. Since mi hermana is feminine singular, saying Fue a mi hermana a la que culparon ayer is perfectly natural and very common in Spain.

Question 3

Why do we use Fue here instead of the imperfect tense Era?

Accepted Answer

We use Fue because the blaming is viewed as a single, completed event in the past, which is signaled by the word ayer (yesterday). In this type of sentence, the verb ser usually matches the tense of the main action verb, so both Fue and culparon are in the preterite tense.

Question 4

In English we say It was, but why is there no word for It at the beginning of the Spanish sentence?

Accepted Answer

English requires a dummy subject like it to make a grammatically correct sentence, but Spanish does not use dummy subjects at all. You just start directly with the conjugated verb Fue.

Fue a mi hermana a quien culparon ayer.

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