Spanish: An Essential Grammar

(b) With one exception, no words may be inserted between haberand a

past participle, e.g. Lo he dicho siempre‘I have always said so’. The excep-

tion is the addition of an object pronoun to haber when it occurs as an

infinitive or a gerund, e.g. después de haberlo dicho‘after having said it’,

habiéndoles escrito‘having written to them’.

(c) English ‘have/had just done’ is expressed in Spanish using the pre-

sent, imperfect, future or conditional tense of the verb acabar‘to finish’:

Alberto acaba/acababa/acabará/acabaría de llegar ‘Alberto has/had/will

have/would have just arrived’.

(d) With transitive verbs, the auxiliary haberis replaced on some occasions

by tener in order to emphasize the result of the past action. This can only

happen when the verb has a direct object, with which the past participle

must agree, e.g. Tengo corregidos los ensayos‘I’ve got the essays marked’.

Perfect tense

Considerable variation surrounds the use of the perfect tense. The picture

given below reproduces Peninsular usage, excluding Asturias and Galicia

which in this respect are more like Latin America, where the preterite is

more common (see 30.4.2).

When time is unspecified

The perfect tense is used when the time of a past event or state is unspec-

ified, especially when the consequences are still relevant:

Ha vuelto Juan. Juan has returned.

Nunca he comido pulpo. I’ve never eaten octopus.

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Uses of
tenses

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The perfect and preterite tenses compared

The preterite tenserelates to a period of time that began and was

completed in the past: Mi padre estuvo enfermo la semana pasada

‘My father was ill last week’.

The perfect tenserelates to a period of time that began in the past

and carries over into the present: Desde entonces mi padre ha estado

contento‘Since then my father has been happy’.