Breakdown of La reforma se complicó y el abuelo acabó rompiendo un azulejo.
y
and
un
a, an, some
el abuelo
the grandfather
romper
to break
la reforma
the renovation
acabar
to end up (doing)
complicarse
to get complicated
el azulejo
the tile
Questions & Answers about La reforma se complicó y el abuelo acabó rompiendo un azulejo.
Why use acabó rompiendo here, and could we say acabó por romper instead?
Both structures mean "ended up breaking" and are part of this lesson's focus on resolution. Acabar + gerundio (rompiendo) is very common for showing the final outcome of a situation. You could absolutely use acabó por romper here; they are essentially interchangeable, though acabar por can sometimes slightly emphasize that the outcome happened after a long struggle or resistance.
Why does the sentence use the reflexive se complicó rather than just complicó?
The base verb complicar means "to complicate" something else (like a person complicating a plan). Adding the pronoun se makes it a change-of-state verb. It translates to "got complicated" or "became complicated", focusing on what happened to the renovation itself rather than who caused the complication.
Both complicó and acabó are in the preterite tense. Why not use the imperfect for the background situation?
While you could use the imperfect (se complicaba) to say the renovation "was getting complicated", using the preterite (se complicó) treats it as a completed step in a sequence of events. The situation became complicated, and as the next distinct event in the chain, the grandfather ended up breaking the tile.
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