Here we must use era because we are speaking of past fact (the occupation of Picasso) but from the point of view of that same past (i.e., relative to that perspective, the event "Picasso was a painter" is a "present continuous" event, something that "was happening" and which was not concluded at that time).Īll this is not specific to the "ser/estar" verb, but rather to the general indefinite/imperfect past tenses in Spanish see eg here. Pablo Picasso era un pintor y escultor que recién había llegado desde España, y Max lo ayudó con el idioma francés. Pablo Picasso was a painter and sculptor that had just come from Spain, and Max helped him with the French language.Įn 1900 Max Jacob conoció a Picasso en París. We are writing about the life of Max Jacob and we assume that the reader does not necessarily knows who Picasso was. Suppose instead that we are in the middle of a narrative. If, say, that phrase is the beginning of a Wikipedia-like article, then the sense is roughly the same as before, hence fue is the correct alternative. Here we have less context, hence the decision "fue/era" is ambiguous. Pablo Picasso was a painter and sculptor.
Here fue is better because we are speaking of a "definite" past, we are stating a past "concluded" fact, from the point of view of the present.
Picasso fue uno de los mejores artistas de siglo veinte. Picasso was one of the best artists of the 20th century
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