Breakdown of Ayer se convocó a las candidatas.
a
personal a (marks a person object)
ayer
yesterday
se
one, people (impersonal)
el candidato
the candidate
Questions & Answers about Ayer se convocó a las candidatas.
Why is the verb singular (convocó) if the candidates (las candidatas) are plural?
This is the core of the impersonal se structure with the personal a. When a human object is introduced by the personal a, the sentence cannot be passive. Instead, it becomes impersonal, meaning the verb is locked into the third-person singular. Therefore, we say se convocó a las candidatas rather than making the verb plural.
What happens if I drop the personal a and just say Ayer se convocaron las candidatas?
Dropping the a turns it into a passive se construction, which forces the verb to match the plural noun (convocaron). However, because candidates are people, this creates ambiguity: it sounds like they summoned themselves (reflexive) or each other (reciprocal). Using the personal a with the singular verb perfectly avoids this confusion.
If I want to replace a las candidatas with a pronoun to say 'Yesterday they were summoned', which pronoun do I use?
You use the direct object pronoun las. The sentence becomes Ayer se las convocó. Even though the sentence translates to English as a passive voice, grammatically in Spanish it acts as an active sentence with an unknown 'impersonal' subject, so the candidates are the direct object.
Does convocar just mean 'to invite'?