Spanish Preposition: A This preposition is a tricky one, even
for locals, because its use is ‘multimodal’ [multiple modes] One
of the most important ones is to indicate who is receiving from
who, i.e. in ‘el perro persigue al gato’ [the dog is after the
cat] if you take it away you’ll get: ‘el perro persigue el
gato’, and you can’t tell who is after who. Sometimes you have
to “take the ‘a’ away”, as in: ‘Antonio busca un sastre’
[Anthony is looking for a tailor] because if you add the ‘a’, as
in ‘Antonio busca a un sastre’, then it means he is looking for
a certain tailor he knows. In these instances ‘a’ gives
personification to whatever follows. Prefiero un albañil a un
plomero I prefer a mason to a plumber.