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Australia flagraffael cummins
imperfect and tratar
Was reading an article today and was a bit confused by these two sentences any help would be great

  1. en 1985, el agente de la DEA Enrique Camarena había sido asesinado en Guadalajara
  2. my question is why is the imperfect haber being used when the year is given, it is because its background information for the rest of the paragraph?
  3. no tardaron en pelearse con otros integrantes de la organizacion
  4. how is the verb tardar being used here

Thank you

Comments · 2

2
1. In the past perfect, haber is almost always in the imperfect, because the past perfect is (ironically?) usually used for providing background information. (Although the action was perfected, the result of the action was an ongoing state.) In you example, we do not know if the agent was killed in 1985 or before; we only know that he was dead at the time referenced — background information about his state at the time referenced.

In literary Spanish, the past perfect with the pretérito I (or "pretérito indefinido") of haber (hube, hubo, etc.) is possible, when refering to an action completed at a specific time. There are certain “trigger words”, such as “apenas”. Note that this is never used in modern spoken Spanish.

2. The most literal translation would probably be “They didn’t take long to start fighting….” More idiomatically, “It didn’t take long for them to….”

0
En la primera frase lo correcto es usar "fue" pero si usa "había sido" probablemente, en el resto del texto estará contando algo que ocurrió ese mismo año.
En la segunda frase "no tardar" significa que pasó algo antes y enseguida se pelearon.

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