Master the 18 Spanish Tenses (and Take Our Cheat Sheet With You)

What if I told you that the key to achieve your language learning goals resides in mastering the 18 Spanish tenses? 

I’m not exaggerating—if you master today’s post, you’ll master all Spanish conjugations and with that, most of your current mistakes when writing and speaking in the language will be gone.  

Keep reading to discover what the Spanish tenses are, how to conjugate the 18 of them, and what you can express with each one of them. 

What Are the Spanish Tenses? 

Just as their counterparts in English, the Spanish tenses refer to time. The reason for their existence is “to inform about the moment in time when an action takes place.” The most common tenses are present, past, and future, but in Spanish you have up to 15 more tenses to express yourself.

These 18 Spanish tenses in total are divided into simple and compound tense. Simple tenses only have a main verb, while compound tenses include the auxiliary verb haber before the main verb in past participle: he estado (I have been). 

Which Are the Spanish Moods? 

The other reason for having so many different Spanish tenses is the existence of three moods: indicative, subjunctive, and imperative. Moods indicate the intention of the speaker and help you distinguish between different tenses. 

The good news is that the imperative doesn’t use any tenses, so we can forget about it for now. The indicative is thought of as the “normal” mood, you usually write or speak in the indicative mood. In the indicative mood, you express the meaning of the verb as a reality. 

The subjunctive mood, on the other hand, has nothing normal about it and requires a deep understanding of how it works before Spanish learners are able to master it. I strongly recommend you to read our three part series on the Spanish subjunctive.

Master the 18 Spanish Tenses

Find in the following lines an introduction to each one of the 18 Spanish tenses, divided by mood and between simple and compound tenses. 

In its “natural” form (infinitive), every verb in Spanish ends either on -ar, -er, -ir. For that reason, I’m including a conjugation of one regular verb for each tense and ending. These verbs are: comprar (to buy), correr (to run), and vivir (to live).

Indicative Mood Simple Tenses

This is the most common combination of mood and tenses, which means these are the conjugations that you’re going to use more. 

Present 

Also known as the “present simple.” Use this tense to talk about things that happen in general, or about habits. 

Corro todas las noches. 

I run every night.  

Preterite

The preterite is one of the Spanish tenses used to speak about the past. The imperfect is the other one. If you want to learn more about these two Spanish tenses check out our post about All You Ever Needed to Know About Spanish (Simple) Past Tense Verbs.

Use the preterite to talk about events that occured at a certain time in the past.  

Imperfect

The imperfect is that “other” simple past tense in Spanish. Use it to talk about “past actions without a definite end,” when you put an emphasis on the process of the action, or habitual events in the past.

Future

There are two Spanish tenses to talk about the events that will happen at any moment after the present moment: the future and the conditional. The future translates to English using the word “will” and it straightforward expresses events that are about to happen or will happen at some point after right now. 

It has the characteristic of changing the whole verb, and because of that it’s easier to learn as all verbs have the same conjugation regardless of their infinitive ending.

Conditional

The conditional is basically the Spanish equivalent of the “would + verb” construction in English, but for a deeper understanding of how it works please read What is the Conditional Tense in Spanish?

The conditional is one of the easiest tenses to conjugate as it keeps the verb in its infinitive form and only adds an inflection at the end of it, for the three types of regular verbs (-ar, -er, -ir).

Indicative Mood Compound Tenses

As I said before, the indicative mood is the most commonly used since we use it to express things that happen in reality. Compound tenses include two verbs, an auxiliary one which always is haber (to have) and the main verb in its past participle form. Learn more details about How to Use the Past Participle as an Adjective in Spanish.  

Present Perfect

The present perfect is the first one on this list of Spanish tenses that’s made up of two verbs: haber + main verb in past participle. Use the perfect present for:

• Events that started in the past, have continued until the present, and may continue into the future.
• Events that occurred in a non-specific time in the past. 
• Events that just took place in the recent past. 

Translate to English as “have/has + past participle verb.” 

Preterite Perfect

Also known as past anterior, preterite perfect helps you to talk about an action in the past that took place before another action in the past. Its use is minimal and limited to formal language and literature mostly. In other words, don’t spend too much time trying to memorize and use this verb tense.

Translate to English as “had + past participle verb.” 

Past Perfect 

The dreaded pluscuamperfecto also helps you to explain something that “had happened before something else happened.” Read this post to Master the Past Perfect Spanish Tense (El Pluscuamperfecto). 

The pluscuamperfecto is the reason the preterite perfect isn’t as commonly used anymore. 

Translate to English as “had + past participle verb.”

Conditional Perfect

Use the conditional perfect to talk about suppositions in the past, complete or finished requests, invitations, or suggestions, and future actions from a past perspective. 

Translate to English as “would have + past participle verb.”

Future Perfect

The future perfect is one of the most complex Spanish tenses there are. It allows you to “look back to the past from a point in the future.”

Translate to English as “will have + past participle verb.”

Take Note

Did you notice how all the compound tenses have the exact same conjugation of haber, the helping verb? Meanwhile, the main verbs (comprar, correr, vivir) morphed into their past participle forms. 

My point is—while, yes, these are a lot of conjugations to learn, they’re not as many (and difficult) as you think at closer inspection! 

Subjunctive Mood Simple Tenses

If the indicative was the “normal” mood, then the subjunctive is the “weird” one. You use the subjunctive to talk about things that are not part of reality, such as wishes and desires, among many other things.

Present

Use the present subjunctive to express uncertainty, doubt, and hope. 

Imperfect 1

There are two imperfect tenses in subjunctive. Both are correct and you can use whichever you prefer and it makes no difference. Use the imperfect subjunctive to express a point of view in the past. 

Imperfect 2

Same situations apply, it’s just a different way of expressing the same idea. If anything, this imperfect tense is more used in Spain than in Latin America. 

Future

This Spanish tense is almost obsolete these days, but it’s still used in formal language when a verb in present or future requires the subjunctive in the main clause and refers to a future action. 

Subjunctive Mood Compound Tenses

These are arguably the most complex Spanish tenses that exist. So much that some of them don’t even have a direct translation to English. 

Present Perfect

Use the present perfect subjunctive when a verb requiring the subjunctive in the main clause is in the present, future, or present perfect. The only difference with the present subjunctive is that you have to use the present perfect subjunctive when the dependent clause is in the past, while you use the present subjunctive when the dependent clause is in the present or future. 

Past Perfect 1

Use the past perfect subjunctive to talk about hypothetical situations, regrets, or hindsight. This is the equivalent subjunctive compound tense to the imperfect, so there are also two versions of it. 

Past Perfect 2

Same case as the imperfect, this version is more widely used in Spain. Besides that, there’s no other difference between the two subjunctive past perfect tenses. 

Future Perfect

Another rarely used tense in modern Spanish. You can use it to talk about actions that have happened, should have happened, or could have happened at some point in the future.

Practice Your Spanish Tenses

I know that was a lot of information to digest in one single post. But, when you analyze the Spanish tenses closely, you can see that many of them change only slightly from one to the other, and that perfect tenses are quite easy to master as their conjugations are the same for every verb. 

Do you want to know the good news? There are no more tenses or conjugations! Now, you know them all and you can focus on introducing them one by one to your daily conversations in Spanish. Sign up for a free class to work through all 18 tenses with native Spanish teachers from Guatemala!

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Luis F. Dominguez

Freelance Writer at Homeschool Spanish Academy

Luis F. Domínguez is a freelance writer and independent journalist interested in travel, languages, art, books, history, philosophy, politics and sports. He has written for Fodor’s, Yahoo!, Sports Illustrated, Telemundo, and Villa Experience, among other brands of print and digital media in Europe and North America.

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