Spanish Pluperfect Subjunctive and Conditional Perfect

Both tenses are haber plus a past participle. Only haber changes:

• Si yo hubiera sabido, habría venido. - If I had known, I would have come.
• Ojalá hubiéramos estudiado más. - If only we had studied more.

The two tenses on one screen

The blue box is the pluperfect subjunctive and the dashed pink box the conditional perfect, all page long. You need the imperfect subjunctive and the conditional first: these two tenses are those tenses of haber.

Building the pluperfect subjunctive

Take the imperfect subjunctive of haber and add a past participle:

The two sets mean the same: si hubiera venido and si hubiese venido are both "if he/she had come". The nosotros forms carry a written accent: hubiéramos, hubiésemos.

Three rules hold for every compound tense:

Building the conditional perfect

Same participle, a different haber: the conditional, habría.

The stem is the short habr- of habré and habría, and every form keeps the accent on the í. There is no -se version: the conditional is always -ía.

On its own it says what would have happened:

• ¿Qué habrías hecho tú en mi lugar? - What would you have done in my place?
• Yo no lo habría dicho. - I wouldn't have said it.

Si hubiera sabido, habría venido

The two tenses meet in the unreal past, a sentence about a past that did not happen. The if takes the pluperfect subjunctive, the result the conditional perfect:

All three types of si sentence, side by side, are on the si clauses page.

Hubiera for habría in the result

In the result half, hubiera can stand in for habría. Both are standard, all over the Spanish-speaking world:

• Si yo lo hubiera sabido, te lo habría dicho. - If I had known, I would have told you.
• Si yo lo hubiera sabido, te lo hubiera dicho. - The same, and just as correct.

The swap runs one way only:

Me alegré de que hubieras venido

Outside si sentences, the pluperfect subjunctive is the subjunctive one step back. When a past trigger (emotion, doubt, denial, an impersonal phrase) reacts to something that happened earlier still, the verb after que goes into the pluperfect subjunctive:

Set it against the imperfect subjunctive, which puts both actions at the same time:

• Me alegré de que vinieras. - I was glad you came.
• Me alegré de que hubieras venido. - I was glad you had come (before).

With no trigger, the plain pluperfect does the job: Era verdad que ya habían llegado. - It was true that they had already arrived.

Ojalá hubiera: regret about the past

Ojalá with the pluperfect subjunctive wishes that the past had gone differently. It is pure regret:

The imperfect subjunctive wishes about now; the pluperfect subjunctive wishes about a past that is over:

• Ojalá tuviéramos tiempo. - I wish we had time (now).
• Ojalá hubiéramos tenido tiempo. - I wish we had had time (then).

The same step back works after como si: Ella actuó como si nada hubiera pasado. - She acted as if nothing had happened. More in si clauses.

Mistakes English speakers make

What to do next

1. Write three regrets with ojalá hubiera and three si hubiera..., habría... sentences.
2. Do the drills below.
3. Then si clauses for all three types side by side.