Expressing Time in the Past - Using Hacer que... in the Past Tense

Here is a lesson allowing you to understand the intricacies of past tense usage: using hacer + unit of time + que. This verb construction of hacer is used to depict an action occurring in the past that hasn't had a defined endpoint. You should recognize this by now as a mode of the imperfect tense. It will help you to review and learn the imperfect form as well as the preterit form of the past tense before continuing on with this lesson.

To start, we will use the imperfect conjugation of the verb hacer in order to set up our scenario. Then, use the conjunction que to attach a verb in its imperfect form. The imperfect of hacer is ONLY existent in its third person singular. Check out the following:

Hacía dos años que yo estudiaba. I had been studying for 2 years.

The underlined part "dos años" is the unit of time used in conjunction with this Spanish phrase. This format can also feature an additional preterit verb conjugation attached to it, so you can express something that might have happened while you had been studying for that two years. We'll add the word "cuando" ("when") to lend continuance to the sentence. Follow these examples:

Hacía dos años que yo estubia cuando por fin saqué mi título. I had been studying for 2 years when finally I got my degree.

Hacía treinta minutos que ella cocinaba cuando quitó las enchiladas del horno. She had been cooking for thirty minutes when she took the enchiladas out of the oven.

Sigue estudiando,

Professor Joel