Condicional simple y condicional compuesto, how to form conditional tense in Spanish

Forming the conditional in Spanish, the condicional simple tense, is very… simple (pun intended)! And there are very few irregular verbs.

Condicional simple, how to form?

To form condicional simple you start with the verb in the infinitive tense. You take the whole verb, including the ending -ar, -er or -ir, and not just the root. And then you add the endings, which are the same for all three conjugations!

The endings are:

-ÍA,

-ÍAS,

-ÍA,

-ÍAMOS,

-ÍAIS,

-ÍAN

Condicional simple of irregular verbs

Completely irregular verbs

• DECIR doesn’t become DECIRÍA, but DIRÍA (dirías, diría, diríamos, diríais, dirían)
• HACER doesn’t become HACERÍA, but HARÍA (harías, haría, haríamos, haríais, harían)
• QUERER doesn’t become QUERERÍA but QUERRÍA (querrías, querría, querríamos, querríais, querrían)

Verbs where the E turns into D

► Now let’s look at some irregular verbs. The following verbs change the E of the ending to D.

So, PONER doesn’t become PONERÍA, but PONDRÍA (and pondrías, pondría, pondríamos, pondríais e pondrían)

Here is the list of verbs that behave this way

• PONER – PONDRÍA
• SALIR – SALDRÍA
• TENER – TENDRÍA
• VALER – VALDRÍA
• VENIR – VENDRÍA

Verbs where the E disappears

► These verbs instead drop the E of the ending.

So HABER doesn’t become HABERÍA, but HABRÍA

How to form condicional compuesto?

Very simple:

condicional simple of the verb HABER  + past participle

yo habría cantado

tu habrías comido

To see how the past participle is formed, click here