haber habrías habríais habría habrían

12. POTENCIAL COMPUESTO
(Conditional Perfect)
haber
habría habríamos
habrías habríais
habría habrían
-ar verbs
- ado
-er verbs
– ido
-ir verbs
– ido
For all verbs use the conditional tense of the helping (auxiliary) verb haber. Then take the main
verb, drop the –ar, -er, -ir ending and add the above endings.
1. Habría patinado.
I would have skated.
2. No habrías comido antes de clase.
You would not have eaten before class.
3. Miguel habría vivido en Argentina
Miguel would have lived in Argentina for
veinte años en 2007.
twenty years in 2007.
Some of the irregulars in this tense are below:
abrir-abierto, cubrir-cubierto, decir-dicho, escribir-escrito, freír-frito, hacer-hecho,
morir-muerto, poner-puesto, resolver-resuelto, romper-roto, ver-visto, volver-vuelto
A. The conditional perfect tense is used to express an action would have been done on
condition that something else had been done .
1. Habría patinado antes de comer.
I would have skated before eating.
2. Ustedes habrán estudiado más,
You would have studied more,
si tuvieran tiempo.
if you had time.
*We know that you didn’t have time, so you could not have studies more.
3. Si estudiaras más, habrías entendido
If you had studied more, you would have
mejor el potencial compuesto.
understood the conditional perfect better.
*The conditional perfect is used with the imperfect subjunctive in if, then clauses.
B. The conditional perfect is also used to indicate probability or conjecture in the past.
1. Habrían sido las cinco cuando salieron. It must (would) have been five o’clock
when they left.
2. ¿Quién habria llamado tan tarde.
Who would have called so late? (or I
wonder who would have called so late?)