promovían

Promovían is the third‑person plural imperfect indicative form of the Spanish verb promover. In English it corresponds to “they were promoting” or “they promoted,” and it is used to describe actions that continued in the past.

The verb promover means to support, encourage, or bring about the development of something, such as a product, idea, event, or person.

Promover comes from the Latin verb promōvere, formed from the prefix pro‑ (forward) and the verb movēre (to move). The Latin root entered Spanish through the medieval period and retains its original sense of moving something forward.

In the imperfect indicative, promover is conjugated with the regular ending –ía for each person, but its stem changes to promov‑. The full conjugation yields: yo promovía, tú promovías, él/ella/Ud. promovía, nosotros promovíamos, vosotros promovíais, ellos/ellas/Uds. promovían.

The form promovían appears in narrative, journalistic, and everyday speech to refer to past activities of promotion. For example: “Los organizadores promovían el evento durante semanas” (The organizers were promoting the event for weeks) and “En los años ochenta los medios promovían el consumo de productos de lujo” (In the 1980s the media promoted the consumption of luxury products).

Related forms of the verb include the infinitive promover, the gerund promocionando, the past participle promovido, and other tenses such as promuevo (present) and promoveré (future). Synonyms in Spanish include fomentar, impulsar, alentar, and patrocinar.

Because promover ends in –er, the spelling of the stem does not change; the letter v is retained before the vowel o, so no b is inserted as in some other irregular verbs.

Thus, promovían serves as a regular imperfect form of a common verb, useful for describing past promotion activities across Spanish.