Sorry, but this seems like nonsense to me in relation to Spanish. The Spanish construction is pretty similar to the English one in usage. It may be slightly mor

Sorry, but this seems like nonsense to me in relation to Spanish. The Spanish construction is pretty similar to the English one in usage. It may be slightly more restricted, but there is no linguistic basis for saying that one is a tense and the other is not. Linguistically speaking, the construction is not a tense unto itself in either language. (It's fine to talk informally about the "present progressive" as a tense, but no serious linguistic analysis of English would recognize the existence of any such tense as distinct from the present tense.) I actually remember being misled by the myth of the uniqueness of the English present progressive when learning Spanish. I'd keep trying to avoid the use of the present participle unless the relevant event was really in progress right now. But it's really easy to find examples where this is not the case. See e.g. the headline here ("how often are you singing?"): https://www.biobiochile.cl/noticias/espectaculos-y-tv/tv/2019/08/12/con-que-frecuencia-estas-cantando-el-dificil-regreso-de-christell-a-la-competencia-de-rojo.shtml https://www.biobiochile.cl/noticias/espectaculos-y-tv/tv/201... Or try a Google search for "these days I'm trying to": https://www.google.com/search?q=%22estos+dias+estoy+tratando+de%22&rlz=1C5CHFA_enGB865GB865&ei=lnhgYOv8L8Sh1fAP6K-M8AQ&oq=%22estos+dias+estoy+tratando+de%22&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EANQ3bEBWKG0AWDdtAFoAXAAeACAAc4BiAHrApIBBTMuMC4xmAEAoAEBqgEHZ3dzLXdpesABAQ&sclient=gws-wiz&ved=0ahUKEwjrn6vAgNPvAhXEUBUIHegXA04Q4dUDCA0&uact=5 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22estos+dias+estoy+tratando...