The Pluperfect Subjunctive and the Conditional Perfect

These are the two heavyweight compound tenses of Spanish, and they are best learnt as a pair because that is how they are used: the pluperfect subjunctive and the conditional perfect are the two halves of the counterfactual past, the grammar of regret and of what never happened. Si hubiera sabido, habría venido - if I had known, I would have come. One tense for the if, one for the then.

The good news is that both are compound, and compound tenses in Spanish are formulaic: an auxiliary plus a past participle, and the auxiliary is always haber. All you are really learning here is two new tenses of one verb. This page assumes you can already build the imperfect subjunctive and the conditional, and that your past participles - hablado, comido, vivido, hecho, dicho, visto, puesto - are solid.

Building the pluperfect subjunctive: imperfect subjunctive of haber + participle

The recipe is one line. Take the imperfect subjunctive of haber and add a past participle.

Because it is built on the imperfect subjunctive, it inherits that tense's two-for-one deal: haber has both a -ra set and a -se set, and they are completely interchangeable.

Add the participle and you have the tense:

Three things to nail down. The participle never moves - it is hablado for every person and both genders, because in a compound tense the participle is frozen; only the auxiliary conjugates. Nothing may come between haber and the participle - it is no lo hubiera dicho, never "hubiera no dicho". And the nosotros form carries a written accent, hubiéramos and hubiésemos, exactly as it did in the plain imperfect subjunctive; leave it off and the word is misspelt.

Building the conditional perfect: conditional of haber + participle

Same participle, different haber. The conditional perfect takes the conditional of haber - the -ía forms - and adds the participle.

So habría comido (I would have eaten), habrías venido (you would have come), habríamos hecho (we would have done), habrían dicho (they would have said). Note the stem is habr-, the same irregular future/conditional stem as the simple conditional, and every person keeps the written accent on the -ía: habría, habrías, habríamos, habríais, habrían. Unlike the pluperfect subjunctive, the conditional perfect has no -se alternative - the conditional is always -ía, never anything else.

The pairing: the third conditional (the counterfactual past)

Now the two tenses meet, and this is the reason to learn them together. The third conditional is the sentence about a past that did not happen and now cannot be changed. Its shape is fixed:

si + pluperfect subjunctive, conditional perfect

• Si hubiera sabido, habría venido. (If I had known, I would have come.) - but I did not know, so I did not come.
• Si hubieras estudiado, habrías aprobado. (If you had studied, you would have passed.)
• Si no hubiera llovido, habríamos ido a la playa. (If it had not rained, we would have gone to the beach.)
• Si me lo hubieras dicho, no habría comprado dos. (If you had told me, I would not have bought two.)

The si half sets up the impossible condition with the pluperfect subjunctive; the result half states what would then have followed with the conditional perfect. Both halves look back at closed history. This is the full counterfactual, and it slots in as Type 3 of the si clauses system, alongside the real and the unreal-present conditionals covered there. The -ra and -se forms are interchangeable in the si half - si hubieras or si hubieses - but, as ever, the conditional perfect result stays habría, never a -se form.

The colloquial swap: hubiera for habría in the result

Here is the wrinkle the textbooks are often shy about. In real Spanish, across most of the Spanish-speaking world, the pluperfect subjunctive frequently replaces the conditional perfect in the result half. So alongside the textbook

• Si hubiera sabido, habría venido.

you will constantly hear and read

• Si hubiera sabido, hubiera venido.

Both halves in the pluperfect subjunctive. This is not sloppy Spanish to be corrected out of learners; it is idiomatic, extremely common, and entirely acceptable, and the -se form does the same job (si hubiese sabido, hubiese venido). My steer: recognise it everywhere, and use it freely in speech - it will make you sound more native than the rigid habría, not less.

But the swap runs in one direction only, and this is the hard line. Hubiera can move into the result half; habría can never move into the si half. The golden rule of si clauses still holds absolutely: no conditional form ever follows si.

• Correct: Si hubiera sabido, habría venido.
• Correct: Si hubiera sabido, hubiera venido. (the colloquial swap)
• Wrong: Si habría sabido, habría venido. - si habría is never Spanish.

So hubiera-for-habría in the result is a free choice; habría-for-hubiera after si is a mistake, full stop.

The pluperfect subjunctive's other jobs

The conditional perfect is largely a one-trick tense - it lives in the result of a third conditional and in a few reported-speech and probability uses. The pluperfect subjunctive, though, has a life beyond si clauses. Any time a sentence needs the subjunctive and the action is a past-before-a-past, this is the tense.

Past-in-past subjunctive triggers

When a normal subjunctive trigger - emotion, doubt, denial, an impersonal expression - sits in the past, and the thing being reacted to happened earlier still, the subordinate verb goes into the pluperfect subjunctive.

• Me alegré de que hubieras venido. (I was glad that you had come.) - the gladness is past, the coming earlier.
• No creía que hubiéramos terminado. (He did not believe that we had finished.)
• Fue una pena que no lo hubieras visto. (It was a shame that you had not seen it.)
• Era imposible que ya hubieran llegado. (It was impossible that they had already arrived.)

Compare me alegré de que vinieras (I was glad you came, same time frame) with me alegré de que hubieras venido (I was glad you had come, earlier). The pluperfect subjunctive is what buys you that extra step back.

ojalá hubiera - regret about the past

Ojalá plus the pluperfect subjunctive is the tense of wishing the past had been otherwise. It is pure regret.

• Ojalá hubiera estudiado más. (If only I had studied more.) - but I did not.
• Ojalá no lo hubiera dicho. (I wish I had not said it.)
• Ojalá hubieras estado allí. (I wish you had been there.)

With the imperfect subjunctive ojalá tuviera wishes about the present; with the pluperfect subjunctive ojalá hubiera tenido wishes about a past that is already sealed.

como si hubiera - an unreal past comparison

Como si (as if) always takes the subjunctive, and when the comparison points at the past, it takes the pluperfect subjunctive.

• Me miró como si hubiera visto un fantasma. (She looked at me as if she had seen a ghost.) - she had not.
• Hablaba del viaje como si hubiera estado allí. (He talked about the trip as if he had been there.)
• Actuó como si nada hubiera pasado. (He acted as if nothing had happened.)

Como si fuera compares to an unreal present; como si hubiera compares to an unreal past. There is never a como si había - the comparison is contrary to fact, so it must be subjunctive.

Worked examples

• Si lo hubiera sabido, te lo habría dicho. (If I had known, I would have told you.) - the textbook third conditional.
• Si lo hubiera sabido, te lo hubiera dicho. (Same meaning.) - the colloquial hubiera-for-habría swap.
• Habríamos llegado a tiempo si no hubiese habido tanto tráfico. (We would have arrived on time if there had not been so much traffic.) - result first, no comma, -se form in the si half.
• Me alegré mucho de que hubieras aprobado. (I was very glad that you had passed.) - past-in-past trigger.
• Ojalá hubiéramos comprado la casa entonces. (If only we had bought the house then.) - regret, note the nosotros accent.
• Gastaba como si le hubiera tocado la lotería. (He spent as if he had won the lottery.) - como si, unreal past.
• ¿Qué habrías hecho tú en mi lugar? (What would you have done in my place?) - conditional perfect as a standalone question.

Common mistakes English speakers make

Putting the conditional after si. The cardinal sin, and it survives even here. English "if I would have known" tempts learners into si habría sabido; Spanish forbids it. The si half takes the pluperfect subjunctive - si hubiera sabido - and the conditional perfect stays in the result, or is itself swapped for another hubiera. If si is followed by habría, it is wrong.

Forgetting the nosotros accent. It is hubiéramos and hubiésemos, with the accent on the third syllable from the end, every time. Writing "hubieramos" is the same slip as "hablaramos" - the stress mark is compulsory, not optional.

Splitting the auxiliary from the participle. Nothing goes between haber and the participle. Pronouns and negatives sit in front of the whole block: no lo hubiera hecho, nunca habría venido, never "hubiera no hecho" or "habría nunca venido".

Making the participle agree. In a compound tense the participle is invariable: ella hubiera hablado, ellos hubieran hablado, las cartas que habría escrito - always -o. Participle agreement belongs to ser/estar and tener constructions, not to haber. It is never "hubiera hablada".

Using the imperfect subjunctive where the past-in-past is needed. Me alegré de que vinieras and me alegré de que hubieras venido are both grammatical but say different things: the first puts the coming at the same time as the gladness, the second puts it earlier. If you mean the deeper past, you need the hubiera layer.

Build both tenses from haber, remember that the pluperfect subjunctive carries the if and the conditional perfect carries the then, and let hubiera cover for habría when you speak. That, plus the ojalá, como si and past-trigger uses, is the whole of the top shelf of the Spanish verb system.

See also

• The imperfect subjunctive - the hubiera / hubiese forms live here; the pluperfect subjunctive is just this tense of haber plus a participle.
• si clauses - the third conditional, si hubiera... habría..., in its full context alongside the real and unreal-present types.
• The conditional - the habría half of the pairing, and why it can never sit after si.
• The Spanish grammar cheatsheet has both paradigms and the third-conditional pairing on one card.