Spanish: Pretérito vs imperfecto in short narratives

You are summarising a film: some actions close a scene while others paint background. The preterite (hablé) slices completed events on a timeline; the imperfect (hablaba) carries ongoing settings, habits, and co-occurring scenery. Mixing them is normal in one paragraph, so the skill is not memorising isolated rules but hearing which job each tense does inside a story.

Practical use: interviews, anecdotes, and travel logs. Edge cases include verbs whose English gloss sounds "completed" yet Spanish still uses imperfect for repeated past (cada verano íbamos…). A readable contrast guide helps calibrate choices [1]; CEFR descriptors remind you that B1 storytelling expects clearer time framing [2].