A week in Ibiza gives Marina plenty to tell — and telling a story in Spanish means choosing, verb by verb, how to look at the past.

	Forms	What it does	Example
Indefinido	llegué, compró, fuimos	a finished event — it happened, full stop	Llegamos el lunes. — We arrived on Monday.
Imperfecto	estaba, era, hacía, iba	the scene: weather, descriptions, feelings — and habits	Hacía mucho calor. — It was very hot.
Estaba + -ndo	estaba nadando	an action in progress, often cut short by an indefinido	Estaba nadando cuando empezó a llover. — I was swimming when it started to rain.
Perfecto	he ido, hemos visto	what has happened today, this week, up to now	Hoy hemos ido a la playa. — We went to the beach today.

A quick test: if the sentence answers and then what happened?, use the indefinido — or the perfecto if it happened today. If it answers what was it like? or what used to happen?, use the imperfecto: Todos los días íbamos a la playa. — Every day we'd go to the beach.