A little guidance on the past, please :-)
First of all, if anyone has the time and knowledge to take a look at this, it is greatly appreciated.
The other day I was watching some comedy clips on YouTube with Spanish subtitles and I couldn't help to notice that the preterit was being used in a lot of situations where I would normally choose the imperfect.
For example- there was something along the lines of "Pensé que eramos amigos." I can understand the use of "eramos," but why use "pensé"? If that were me I would have said "Pensaba que eramos amigos," just because you don't think of something for just one time, when you think it happens over a period of unspecified time, am I right? I also tried to look for any context at all like "anoche, ayer," but I could not find any.
Another example involves "ser" and "estar" in the preterit. Now to me I only find myself using these in the preterit when context is involved, but I understand the fact that it can also be used to specifically signify "complete actions," or actions that once were but are not anymore or have changed. Like: "Fui bajo pero ahora soy alto." Now I could be greatly mistaken here, so guidance is appreciated. Okay well back to my other example. "Estuvo mejor que anoche, cuando no estabamos de acuerdo." We see "anoche" here but the speaker is not referring to something that happened last night. Rather he is talking about something that another person said. "That was better" as in "What you just said was better than last night when we weren't in agreement."
I guess my main point is, why presicely are these verbs in the preterit? Is there some sort of "rule" that I'm leaving out?
Gracias por la ayuda 
3 Answers
Pensé que eramos amigos. But now I don't think the same.
Pensaba que eramos amigos. There might be some doubts about this or up until last night or me up until now, "pensaba", but now it is gone.
Would that explain it?
Most of the time when dealing with the past tenses in Spanish both tenses can be used, the meaning just changes. In the sentence "Pensé que éramos amigos" I would say that something drastic happened between the speaker and whomever he/she is talking about, which had an immediate impact on said relationship. In the sentence "Estuvo mejor que anoche, cuando no estábamos de acuerdo", "Estuvo" is used because whatever condition that the speaker is referring to is viewed by the speaker as terminated. The so-called "rules" are a great place to start learning about the past tenses in Spanish, but once you learn them you will see that they are broken all the time.
Ok, I think now that what I was thinking before was right. Corect me if I'm wrong, but the spanish past tense sometimes can go either way based on judgement, feelings, ect.?
Si quería decir....
1.) The test was hard.= El examin fue dificil. I would say fue because the test is over, right?
or
2.) "I wanted to tell you something." can be "Quise decirte algo" or "Quería decirte algo." ??
I would think that if we used quise it would signify that either I did actually tell you it or that I no longer want to tell you, and if we used *quería" we are saying that I wanted to tell you something, and still do.
....or am I completely wrong?
