This deep dive covers Describing Your Family Structure within Family relationships for GCSE Spanish. Revise Family relationships in Theme 1 — People & Lifestyle for GCSE Spanish with 13 exam-style questions and 15 flashcards. Use this page as part of a wider topic revision path rather than treating it as an isolated fact. It is section 2 of 4 in this topic. Use this deep dive to connect the idea to the wider topic before moving on to questions and flashcards.
🔍 Describing Your Family Structure
Numbers and family size
Use these structures to describe who is in your family. AQA examiners expect you to be able to both produce and understand them across all four papers.
- En mi familia somos cinco personas. — There are five people in my family.
- Soy hijo/a único/a. — I am an only child. (Note: único/a agrees with gender — use única if you are female.)
- Tengo dos hermanos y una hermana. — I have two brothers and one sister.
- Tengo un hermano mayor y una hermana menor. — I have an older brother and a younger sister.
Marital status — always usar estar
Marital status always takes estar, never ser. This is because a relationship status is considered a changeable, temporary state — it can change over time. Ser describes permanent identity; estar describes changeable conditions.
| Status | Spanish | Verb used |
|---|---|---|
| married | casado/a | estar (temporary/changeable) |
| divorced | divorciado/a | estar |
| single | soltero/a | estar |
| widowed | viudo/a | estar |
| together (in a relationship) | juntos | estar |
Example: Mis padres están divorciados. — My parents are divorced. — NOT son divorciados (AQA examiners penalise this error on Paper 4).
⭐ Ser vs estar for family descriptions
Use ser for permanent description: Es mi padre. (He is my father.) Use estar for marital status: Mis padres están divorciados. (My parents are divorced.) Marital status uses ESTAR, not ser. The relationship can change over time — so it is temporary. This ser/estar distinction is tested directly in Paper 3 (Reading) gap-fill tasks.