Learn Spanish (Spain): Muchas tiendas han cerrado debido a la crisis. - Many shops have closed due to the crisis.

In Spain, the present perfect (han cerrado) is frequently used for past actions that remain connected to the present. In this sentence, it implies that the crisis is ongoing or that the economic impact of the shops closing is still being felt right now.

Since tiendas is feminine and plural, why is the participle cerrado and not cerradas?

When a past participle follows the auxiliary verb haber to form a compound tense, it always ends in -o and never changes. It only agrees in gender and number when used as an adjective, for example: las tiendas están cerradas (the shops are closed).

Could I use por instead of debido a in this sentence?

Yes, por la crisis is perfectly natural and very common in everyday spoken Spanish. Debido a means due to or owing to, and it is slightly more formal, making it an excellent choice for news reports or written Spanish.

The word crisis ends in an -s. How can we tell it is singular in this sentence?

We know it is singular because it uses the singular feminine article la. Nouns ending in -is, such as la crisis or la tesis, do not change their spelling in the plural. If the sentence were referring to multiple crises, it would say las crisis.