Past Perfect Subjunctive in Spanish!! Advanced Stuff!

The pluperfect subjunctive (pretérito pluscuamperfecto de subjuntivo) is used after specific verbs and expressions of doubt, wishes, hopes, personal opinions or feelings. It expresses actions that took place before a specific past time or that would have taken place under different conditions.

Learn about the conjugation and usage of the pluperfect subjunctive in Spanish grammar with Lingolia’s grammar rules and exercises. See indicative tenses for information about pluperfect indicative and tense comparison for the difference between the indicative and subjunctive mood in Spanish grammar.

Example

Me extrañó mucho que me hubieras mandado una postal de la Cordillera Cantábrica. Probablemente, me hubiera encantado la visita a la región. ¿Te imaginas qué hubiéramos visto lobos ibéricos?

Si me lo hubieras dicho antes, habría ido contigo

Usage

The subjunctive is used after specific expressions of wishes, hopes doubt, feeling or personal opinion. We use the past perfect subjunctive in the following cases:

• in dependent clauses after certain expressions, when the subjunctive action had already taken place beforehand
  

  Example:

  Me extrañó mucho que me hubieras mandado una postal de la Cordillera Cantábrica.

• action that could/would have taken place in the past (but did not take place)
  

  Example:

  Probablemente, me hubiera encantado la visita a la región.

  ¿Te imaginas qué hubiéramos visto lobos ibéricos?

• in conditional clause type III si-clauses (unreal condition in the past)

• Example:

  Si me lo hubieras dicho antes, habría ido contigo.

  
  

  Dependent Clauses

  We can only use the past perfect subjunctive (pretérito pluscuamperfecto subjuntivo) in a dependent clause when the verb in the main clause is in one of the following tenses.

  
  

  
  

  tense	main clause	dependent clause
  preterite	Me alegró…	(de) que hubiera venido.
  conditional	Seguro que me alegraría…
  conditional perfect	Seguro que me habría alegrado…

  
  

  person	haber	participle
  yo	hubiera/hubiese	hablado aprendido vivido
  tú	hubieras/hubieses
  él/ella/usted	hubiera/hubiese
  nosotros/-as	hubiéramos/hubiésemos
  vosotros/-as	hubierais/hubieseis
  ellos/ellas/ustedes	hubieran/hubiesen

  
  
  

  Past Participle

  We construct the past participle by removing the infinitive ending and adding the corresponding participle ending: -ado for -ar verbs or -ido for -er/-ir verbs.

  Example:

  hablar - hablado

  aprender - aprendido

  vivir - vivido

  Irregular past participles

  Some verbs have irregular participle forms. The most important irregular participle forms are listed in the table below:

  verb	past participle	translation
  abrir	abierto	open
  decir	dicho	say
  escribir	escrito	write
  hacer	hecho	do/make
  imprimir	impreso	print
  morir	muerto	die
  poner	puesto	set/place
  ver	visto	see
  volver	vuelto	return