Hi David, Yes, there is. Some examples: 1) Tenía hambre Cada vez que tenía hambre trataba de pensar en otra cosa (the action is repeated). Así logré perder peso (here the action ocurred and is finished). El niño siempre tenía hambre, no había comida que lo saciara (the action happened many times in the past). Una vez cuando tenía hambre, me comí un pollo entero (some event (comí un pollo) occurred while another was happening (tenía hambre) 2) Tuve hambre. Una vez tuve tanta hambre, que me comí un pollo entero (this event tuve hambre, occured once) Tuve hambre y no me diste de comer. (at some point in time) /but: tenía hambre y no me daban de comer (it occurred many times) Esta mañana tuve un hambre enorme y el desayuno se demoró mucho. No aguantaba las ganas de comer. Hope it helps. Saludos, Antonio

It is quite similar but when you say “tuve hambre” (without tilde), you are talking about something that started and finished. However, when you use “tenía hambre” we don’t know if the action finished. “Tenía”= pretérito imperfecto “Tuve”= pretérito perfecto simple.

Yo creo que no hay diferencia, porque todo va a llevar en el mismo sentido

yes there are differences. when you use "tuve", which is "pretétito simple" (simple past) you are expressing something that happened once in the past and finished in the past. We spanish speaker do not normally use this tense for narrations, we use "pretérito imperfecto" (imperfect) instead. So this means that if you are telling another person a story, you shall use "tenía" instead of "tuve". the imperfect tense is used for telling stories and expressing actions that you used to do in the past; simple past tense is just used to express actions that happened once in the past and finished in the past example: tuve que trabajar ayer (simple past) = I had to work yesterday tenía mucha hambre en ese momento= I was very hungry in that moment Espero te haya ayudado. Si quieres conocer más acerca de esto, visita mi perfil y agenda una clase conmigo, con gusto te ayudaré. I hope I helped you. If you want to know more about this, visit my profile, I will gladly help you, book a class. Norwick Native Spanish teacher finishing a master program in English as a foreign language