Conditional Perfect in Spanish Grammar
- When to use the conditional perfect in Spanish
- How to conjugate the conditional perfect in Spanish
- Online exercises to improve your Spanish
- Lingolia Plus Spanish
What is the condicional compuesto in Spanish?
The conditional perfect (condicional compuesto), is a Spanish compound tense. It is used to express possibility in the past i.e. actions the could or would have taken place. We can also express wishes or suppositions about the past.
Learn when to use the conditional perfect in Spanish grammar and master the conjugation of regular and irregular verbs in this tense. Then test your knowledge in the exercises. In tense comparison, you will find an overview of all the tenses in Spanish grammar.
Example

Rosa: Si ayer no hubiera llovido, Juanjo y yo habríamos ido a la playa.
Aytana: ¡Ya te vale! Habrías podido avisarnos, ¿no crees?
Rosa: Perdona. Creí que no habríais querido venir.
Aytana: Si nos hubiérais llamado, lo habríais comprobado. Además nosotros vamos siempre a la playa. ¿Crees que habríamos dicho que no?
When to use the conditional perfect in Spanish
We use the conditional perfect to express:
- completed actions including invitations, requests, wishes, suggestions
- Example:
- Habrías podido avisarnos.You could have let us know.
- suppositions about the past i.e. What might have happened?
- Example:
- Creí que no habríais querido venir.I thought you wouldn’t have wanted to come.
- ¿Crees que habríamos dicho que no?Do you think we would have said no?
- actions that would have taken place in the past under other circumstances
- Example:
- Si ayer no hubiera llovido, Juanjo y yo habríamos ido a la playa.If it hadn’t rained yesterday, Juanjo and I would have gone to the beach.
How to conjugate the conditional perfect in Spanish
To conjugate verbs in the conditional perfect, we use the condicional simple of verb haber + past participle.
Person | haber | Past Participle |
---|---|---|
yo | habría |
hablado aprendido vivido |
tú | habrías | |
él/ella/usted | habría | |
nosotros/-as | habríamos | |
vosotros/-as | habríais | |
ellos/ellas/ustedes | habrían |
Past Participle
We construct the past participle by removing the infinitive ending and adding the corresponding ending: -ado for -ar verbs or -ido or -er/-ir verbs.
- Example:
- hablar - hablado
- aprender - aprendido
- vivir - vivido
Irregular past participles
-
If there is a vowel before the -ido ending, we have to add an accent on the i of the ending. This shows us that each vowel needs to be pronounced separately and not as a diphthong.
- Example:
- leer – leído
- traer - traído
- Some verbs have an irregular and/or regular participle form. These can be found in the following list:
verb | past participle | translation | |
---|---|---|---|
irregular | regular | ||
abrir | abierto | open | |
decir | dicho | say | |
escribir | escrito | write | |
hacer | hecho | do/make | |
freír | frito | freído | fry |
imprimir | impreso | imprimido | |
morir | muerto | die | |
poner | puesto | place/set | |
proveer | provisto | proveído | provide |
suscribir | suscrito/suscripto | sign/subscribe | |
ver | visto | see | |
volver | vuelto | return |
Irregular verbs and their derivatives
Many of the irregular verbs in the table above have derivative forms. This is where a prefix (en-, des-, pos-, etc.) is added to the irregular verb to create a verb with a new meaning.
These derivatives follow the same patterns when forming their past participles.
- Examples:
- encubrir → encubierto
- descubrir → descubierto
- componer → compuesto
- posponer → pospuesto
- proponer → propuesto
- revolver → revuelto
- resolver → resuelto
- devolver → devuelto
- deshacer → deshecho
- prever → previsto