on this flight" (estar necessary to distinguish the sentence from the following one) Ha sido prohibido fumar en este vuelo = "It has been prohibited (i.e. made against the rules) to smoke on this flight" (This is an example of the passive voice. This use of ser in the perfect tense is similar to the use of estar in the present tense; the former expressing an event in the past, the latter expressing its current effect.) This fine nuance is not encountered in other Romance languages, which do not go to such lengths to distinguish between passives and similar-sounding phrases. Location Estar is used to refer to physical location. In Spanish, location is regarded as a state, and therefore is indicated with estar, even in those cases (e.g. Madrid está en España "Madrid is in Spain") when one might think that it is something so permanent and fundamental that it could be logical to use ser. The use of estar for location may be easier for English speakers to grasp if they recall that it is derived from Latin , "to stand." With immobile things, quedar is sometimes used instead of estar, especially when there is a reference to a length of time, or a remaining distance, e.g.: ¿A cuánto queda la playa? / ¿A qué distancia queda la playa? = "How far away is the beach?" Aún queda lejos = "There is still quite some way" / "It is still far" El bar queda a cinco minutitos = "The bar is five minutes away" However, ser can sometimes occur with words such as aquí, which can mislead learners into thinking that physical location can be expressed with ser. In fact, the verb in this case identifies the place rather than expressing where it is. For example, one might say to a taxi driver the following phrases, to indicate that one has arrived: Está aquí = "It is here" Es aquí = "It is here" The difference becomes clear if aquí is changed to esta calle: Está en esta calle = "It is in this street" Es esta calle = "It is this street" Es aquí and es esta calle express the idea that "this is the place", a concept quite different from what is expressed by estar. The only case in which true location is expressed by ser is when an event rather than a physical thing is referred