The Spanish imperfect tense is used to describe ongoing, repeated, or habitual actions in the past, as well as background descriptions like weather, age, emotions, and physical states. If the preterite (the other main past tense) captures a single completed event, the imperfect captures everything that was already happening around it: routines, feelings, appearances, and scenes. Understanding when to reach for the imperfect instead of the preterite is one of the biggest leaps in learning Spanish.
Habitual or Repeated Actions
The most common use of the imperfect is talking about things that used to happen regularly. Any routine, habit, or recurring action in the past calls for the imperfect rather than the preterite. Think of it as the English equivalent of “used to” or “would (regularly).”
Cada verano íbamos a la playa. (Every summer we used to go to the beach.)
Mi abuela cocinaba todos los domingos. (My grandmother cooked every Sunday.)
Certain time expressions are strong signals that you need the imperfect because they point to frequency rather than a one-time event:
- cada día / todos los días (every day)
- generalmente (usually)
- a veces (sometimes)
- regularmente (regularly)
- siempre (always)
When you see one of these phrases in a sentence about the past, the imperfect is almost always the right choice.
Descriptions of People, Places, and Things
The imperfect is the go-to tense for describing what someone or something was like in the past. Physical appearance, personality traits, and characteristics all take the imperfect because they represent states rather than actions with a clear start and end.
Cuando era pequeño, tenía el pelo largo. (When I was little, I had long hair.)
La casa era grande y tenía un jardín enorme. (The house was big and had a huge garden.)
This extends to setting scenes in a story. If you’re painting the background, describing the environment, or establishing what things looked like before something happened, you use the imperfect. The preterite then steps in for the main events that interrupt or advance the story.
Emotions, Mental States, and Physical Conditions
Feelings, moods, and physical conditions in the past are expressed with the imperfect because they describe a state that was in progress, not a sudden event. Verbs like estar (for temporary states), sentirse (to feel), querer (to want), saber (to know), and creer (to believe) frequently appear in the imperfect when talking about the past.
Ayer no salí porque estaba cansado. (I didn’t go out yesterday because I was tired.)
No sabía qué decir. (I didn’t know what to say.)
Notice the first example: “I didn’t go out” uses the preterite because it’s a completed action, but “I was tired” uses the imperfect because it describes the ongoing condition that explains why. This pairing of preterite events with imperfect background states is extremely common in Spanish.
Weather, Time, and Age
Three situations that trip up learners are weather, clock time, and age. All three use the imperfect in the past because they describe conditions or states rather than events.
For weather:
Hacía sol. (It was sunny.)
Estaba nublado. (It was cloudy.)
For time:
Eran las tres de la tarde. (It was three in the afternoon.)
For age:
Tenía diez años cuando nos mudamos. (I was ten years old when we moved.)
In each case, the weather, time, or age was already true and ongoing. It serves as a backdrop, not an event with a beginning and end.
Saying “There Was” or “There Were”
The word había, the imperfect form of hay (there is/there are), is used to say “there was” or “there were” when describing a scene or situation. It stays the same whether you’re talking about one thing or many.
Había mucha gente en la fiesta. (There were a lot of people at the party.)
Había un fantasma en mi casa. (There was a ghost in my house.)
Two Actions Happening at the Same Time
When two actions were happening simultaneously in the past, both take the imperfect. The word mientras (while) is a common signal.
Yo leía mientras ella cocinaba. (I was reading while she was cooking.)
This is different from a sentence where an ongoing action gets interrupted by a sudden event. In that case, the ongoing action takes the imperfect and the interruption takes the preterite: Yo leía cuando sonó el teléfono. (I was reading when the phone rang.)
How to Form the Imperfect
Regular imperfect conjugations follow predictable patterns based on the verb ending. For -ar verbs, drop the infinitive ending and add: -aba, -abas, -aba, -ábamos, -abais, -aban. For -er and -ir verbs, the endings are: -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -íais, -ían.
So hablar (to speak) becomes hablaba, hablabas, hablaba, hablábamos, hablabais, hablaban. And comer (to eat) becomes comía, comías, comía, comíamos, comíais, comían. Once you learn these two patterns, you can conjugate almost every verb in Spanish in the imperfect.
The Three Irregular Verbs
Only three verbs are irregular in the imperfect tense, which makes it one of the easiest Spanish tenses to learn from a conjugation standpoint.
Ir (to go): iba, ibas, iba, íbamos, ibais, iban
Ser (to be): era, eras, era, éramos, erais, eran
Ver (to see): veía, veías, veía, veíamos, veíais, veían
Ver is only slightly irregular. It keeps the “e” from the infinitive stem before the regular -ía endings, while most -er verbs drop it. Ir and ser are fully irregular and need to be memorized, but they come up so often in conversation that they become second nature quickly.
A Quick Test for Choosing the Imperfect
When you’re deciding between the preterite and the imperfect, ask yourself: does this sentence describe a background state, a routine, or an ongoing situation? Or does it describe a completed event with a clear beginning or end? If the answer is background, routine, or ongoing, use the imperfect. If the sentence focuses on what happened at a specific moment, use the preterite.
Another helpful check: can you translate the sentence using “was doing,” “used to do,” or “would (habitually) do”? If yes, the imperfect is your tense. If the sentence translates more naturally as a simple past (“I went,” “she called,” “they arrived”), the preterite is the better fit.