Recuerdos y Anécdotas - Memories and Stories
Ayer, Anoche, El Año Pasado - Perfecto vs. Indefinido in Spain
You now have two past tenses. The pretérito perfecto handles today, this week, this year, ever in your life. The pretérito indefinido handles yesterday, last night, last summer, two years ago. The line between them is sharp in Spain — sharper than in any Latin American Spanish — and once you hear it, you'll never confuse the two again. This lesson is the integration lesson: no new conjugations, just the choice. By the end, you'll hear ayer and reach for indefinido without thinking, and esta semana and reach for perfecto without thinking.
The Two Boxes
Sort every time marker you know into two boxes:
Open time → perfecto (the period is still going)
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| hoy | today |
| esta mañana | this morning |
| esta tarde | this afternoon / evening |
| esta semana | this week |
| este mes | this month |
| este año | this year |
| este finde | this weekend |
| ya / todavía no | already / not yet |
| alguna vez / nunca | ever / never |
| últimamente | lately |
Closed time → indefinido (the period has finished)
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| ayer | yesterday |
| anoche | last night |
| anteayer | the day before yesterday |
| el lunes (pasado) | last Monday |
| la semana pasada | last week |
| el mes pasado | last month |
| el año pasado | last year |
| el verano pasado | last summer |
| hace dos días | two days ago |
| hace una semana | a week ago |
| en 2019 | in 2019 |
| aquel día / aquella vez | that day / that time |
The clean rule: if the time period that contains the event is still going as you speak, use perfecto. If it's over, use indefinido.
The Side-by-Side
Watch the same sentence shift tense as the time marker shifts:
| Open time (perfecto) | Closed time (indefinido) |
|---|---|
| Hoy he comido en casa. | Ayer comí en casa. |
| Esta semana he trabajado mucho. | La semana pasada trabajé mucho. |
| Este año he viajado a Italia. | El año pasado viajé a Italia. |
| Esta mañana he ido al gimnasio. | Anoche fui al cine. |
| Hoy he hablado con Marta. | Anteayer hablé con Marta. |
| Este finde hemos visto una peli. | El finde pasado vimos una peli. |
Notice three things:
- The verb stays the same; the tense moves with the time marker.
- Esta / este = open. Pasada / pasado = closed. That single contrast covers most of the choice.
- Hace + time = closed. Hace dos días, hace tres meses, hace un año — all indefinido.
The Anchor Words You Can Trust
Five time markers are unambiguous. If you see them, the tense is decided:
- ayer → indefinido. Ayer fui al banco.
- anoche → indefinido. Anoche cenamos en casa.
- hoy → perfecto. Hoy he comido tarde.
- alguna vez → perfecto. ¿Has estado alguna vez en Bilbao?
- hace dos días / una semana / un año → indefinido. Hace dos días llamé a mi hermana.
If you can lock these five down, you've cleared 80% of the choice. The rest is edge cases.
A Quick Drill
Read each time marker, decide the tense, then pick a verb:
- Esta tarde (ir) al médico. → he ido (perfecto)
- El lunes pasado (hablar) con el jefe. → hablé (indefinido)
- Anoche (cenar) en casa de Marta. → cené (indefinido)
- Este mes (trabajar) un montón. → he trabajado (perfecto)
- Hace dos años (vivir) en Granada. → viví (indefinido)
- Nunca (probar) la fabada. → he probado (perfecto)
- Aquel día (ser) increíble. → fue (indefinido)
The drill becomes reflexive after about a hundred repetitions. Pay attention to the marker first, the verb second.
Why Mexican Textbooks Say Something Different
If you've used a Spanish course written for Latin America, you may have learned ayer comí and hoy comí as both equally normal. In most of Latin America they are: the indefinido has spread to cover events Spain still treats with perfecto. Hoy fui al banco in Mexico City is normal; hoy he ido al banco in Madrid is normal. Both are correct Spanish. They're just different national defaults.
This matters for two reasons. First, don't get confused if you watch a Mexican film and hear past-tense forms in places where this lesson predicts perfecto — that's not a contradiction, it's regional variation. Second, don't carry that habit back to Spain. Hoy fui al banco in a Spanish bar will sound a touch off. Not wrong, just non-local. Once you've tuned your ear to the Spain pattern, you'll hear the difference clearly.
The Grey Zone
A few situations sit between the two boxes:
- Hace un rato — "a while ago." Technically closed, but Spaniards in central Spain often pair it with perfecto when the result still matters: he comido hace un rato ("I've eaten a little while ago") is more common than comí hace un rato in Madrid casual speech.
- Esta mañana at 11pm — by 11pm, "this morning" feels closed. You'll hear both esta mañana fui and esta mañana he ido depending on the speaker.
- Esta semana said on Monday morning vs. Sunday night — the tense usually stays perfecto, but the second case feels closer to indefinido.
The rule of thumb: when in doubt and the time feels recent and relevant, go with the perfecto. That's Spain's instinct.
A small Castilian note on pronunciation: ayer has a soft y — ah-YER, not ah-JAIR. Hace carries the theta on the c — AH-theh. Vez ends with the theta — BETH. The whole register of this lesson is theta-heavy: aquella vez, hace, entonces all sing in peninsular Spanish.
Practice
Words to Remember
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| ayer | yesterday |
| anoche | last night |
| anteayer | the day before yesterday |
| el lunes pasado | last Monday |
| la semana pasada | last week |
| el mes pasado | last month |
| el año pasado | last year |
| el verano pasado | last summer |
| hace dos días | two days ago |
| hace una semana | a week ago |
| hace un mes | a month ago |
| en 2019 | in 2019 |
| aquel día | that day |
| aquella vez | that time |
| entonces | then, at that point |
| esta semana | this week |
| este año | this year |
| hoy | today |
| ya | already |
| todavía no | not yet |
Conversation
This week and yesterday
Madre: ¿Qué tal la semana? How was the week?
Diego: Esta semana he trabajado mucho. This week I've worked a lot.
Madre: ¿Y ayer? And yesterday?
Diego: Ayer comí con Marta. Yesterday I had lunch with Marta.
Last year's trip
Madre: El año pasado fuisteis a Italia, ¿verdad? Last year you went to Italy, right?
Diego: Sí, estuvimos diez días en la Toscana. Yes, we were ten days in Tuscany.
Madre: ¿Y este año? And this year?
Diego: Este año todavía no hemos decidido. This year we still haven't decided.
Galicia
Padre: Hace dos años fuimos a Galicia. Two years ago we went to Galicia.
Diego: Yo nunca he estado allí. I've never been there.
Padre: Pues el verano pasado lo pasamos genial. Well last summer we had a great time.
Practice
Recall
Type the Spanish for each English meaning. Leave a row blank if you draw a blank — that counts as a miss.
Practice
Translation Exercise
Translate each English sentence into Spanish.
Cultural Note
This lesson is the moment your Spanish stops sounding like a textbook and starts sounding peninsular. Mexican telenovelas, Argentine YouTube channels, Colombian salsa lyrics — they all use the indefinido more freely than Spain does. Hoy fui, hoy comí, hoy hablé are normal sentences in those varieties. In central Spain they sound like a tourist who learned Spanish from a Mexican textbook. The fix is small and free: train your ear to esta + perfecto and pasado / pasada + indefinido as automatic pairs.
There's a deeper cultural point too. The Spanish preference for the perfecto isn't only about grammar — it reflects a particular way of treating recent events. He comido tarde, he tenido un día horrible, hemos perdido el metro — the perfecto wraps these in the present moment, treats them as "current state" rather than "history." A Spaniard finishing dinner says he cenado bien, not cené bien, because the meal is still in the air. That "I'm-still-in-it" feeling is built into the tense. Once you sense that, the choice stops being a rule and becomes a feeling.
The flip side is the indefinido's emotional weight. When you switch from perfecto to indefinido — ayer estuvimos en el médico — you're closing a chapter. The day is done, the trip is done, the year is done. There's a small but audible shift between este verano he ido a Granada ("this summer I've gone to Granada," and the summer is still going) and el verano pasado fui a Granada ("last summer I went to Granada," and that's a story now). Spanish is one of the few languages that lets you mark this difference in a single tense. Use it.