As we discuss in detail in our simple present tense blog post, the -ER and -IR verb endings are quite similar. The regular verbs divide into three groups based on their endings: -AR, -ER, or -IR. If you remember from our previous posts, there are both regular and irregular verbs in Spanish. Spanish Past Tense Conjugations: Regular Verbs Now that you understand how the two past tenses are used, we will narrow our focus to the pretérito and see how to conjugate it. Teníamos una noche de juegos cada jueves.Ella jugaba básquetbol cuando era niña.Tomabamos café cada domingo cuando estabamos en la universidad.If you are talking about habitual past events or things you “used to” do, then use the imperfecto.Él me regaló una nueva bicicleta para mi cumpleaños.If you are talking about singular past events, or events that happened several times but NOT habitually, use the pretérito.In order to know which to choose, keep the following in mind: We used to have game night every Thursday.

She used to play basketball when she was younger.

We used to get coffee every Sunday when we were in college.

El imperfecto is for actions that repeatedly took place in the past, or continual states (like time and weather).

We went to the movie theater last Friday.El pretérito is for actions that took place one time.Instead, two different tenses exist in Spanish that translate to the simple past in English: el pretérito and el imperfecto. However, it’s important to note that there is no pasado simple in Spanish. Specifically, in this blog post, we will focus on what we call the simple past in English. First of all, when we say the “past tense,” this phrase encompasses multiple different tenses (past simple, continuous, perfect, etc.).

List of regular past tense verbs