PAST TENSES ACROSS THE ATLANTIC Following previous studies of the syntactic variation on tense this work reviews the historical development and present-day usage of two past tenses in Latin-American and European Spanish. It covers those aspects which connect the usage of the preterit and the present perfect with the speakers using them in a mainly socio-pragmatic perspective. Specifically it investigates the aspectual distinction frequency of use of these tenses by speakers on both sides of the Atlantic and the extent to which the present perfect is replaced by the preterit in Latin-American Spanish. The study includes the contrastive description of aspectual values as utilized in European Romances as opposed to the transplanted dialects of Latin-America. The value of recent past so dominant in the present perfect of Peninsular Spanish and other European Romances is fulfilled by the simple preterit in Latin-American Spanish though the varying frequencies found in the language samples from different regions and register types also indicate that the aspectual value of the preterit is not entirely uniform in the New World.