The past tense in Spanish – Which one you actually learn?

There are 9 past tenses in Spanish. How on earth, do you know where to start? Which past tenses are important and which you put on the side for now? Let us set apart the past tenses, so you know which past tenses you actually need to know and which to leave for what it is right now.

The 9 past tenses in Spanish are:

• Indicative preterite
• Indicative present perfect
• Indicative Imperfect
• Indicative past perfect
• Indicative anterior preterite.
• Subjunctive past perfect
• Subjunctive present perfect

The 3 past tenses you actually need to know:

The past tenses every Spanish learner needs to know:

• The past tense beginners need to know: Preterite/Simple past
• The past tense intermediate students need to know: Indicative Present perfect and Indicative Imperfect.

These 3 tenses form the basics of the past conjugations and also make up most past conjugations used in daily life: Indicative Preterite/Simple past, Present perfect and Imperfect.

If you don’t know them already we highly recommend you to learn them when you have the opportunity.

The past tenses in Spanish you don’t need to learn:

If there are 3 essential past tenses to learn it also means there are 6 past tenses that are not essential to learn. Only an advanced learner would want to learn the remaining tenses:

• The past tense advanced students need to know: Indicative Past Perfect, Anterior preterite. And in the subjunctive mood: Past Perfect, Present perfect.

Only start studying these tenses when you have mastered the essential 3. And please also know there is a possibility you will develop this automatically when you have passed this phase. This is because sometimes when you immerse yourself in a language you will eventually start copying what you are hearing or reading. If this is the case for you, you will find that these tenses are usually automatically picked up along the way.

THE Most used form of the past tense in Spanish:

The most used form of the past tense would be the “Preterite” or “Simple Past”. It is the simple the equivalent of the English simple past tense: learned, wanted, walked, spoke, ran, cooked etc. It describes an action or event that has happened in the past.

Here is how to conjugate that tense:

The Present perfect in Spanish

Sometimes it is not the simple past that you start to learn, it could also be that this is the first past tense thought in Spanish. Purely because it can be thought within minutes and it is a kind of past tense that, if not used in the correct way, the receiver will still know what was meant. This makes it a very useful kind of past tense that can get you a long way if your ability to speak the past tense if still somewhat limited.

The present perfect is the equivalent in English to: have spoken, have walked, have bought, have rented.

In Spanish it usually talks about the recent past, which is why it is often used in a sentence in combination with: esta mañana, esta semana, este año. Here is how the present perfect is formed in Spanish:

The imperfect tense in Spanish

Some might argue that the imperfect tense is the most used past tense in Spanish. It is hard to define the past tense that is most used because it depends on so many factors. Whether or not this is the most used past tense or not, it is essential that you know it if you want to become a Spanish speaker.

The imperfect tense is a great past tense to use for when you are speaking about experiences and actions in the past that are part of a story. For example. If you were to say “I lived in Chicago.”

Viví en Chicago. – Use the simple past, because this is a statement. A simple brief announcement.

Vivía en Chicago cuando estudiaba en la universidad…. – Use the imperfect tense because you are saying you did something as part of a story.

I hope you found this article useful and take something from it. Keep learning! And please let it known if you have any comments, add ons and requests for future topics.

Conjugation cheat sheets

Interested in knowing more about Spanish conjugation patterns? Have a look at these: