Spanish: An Essential Grammar

Pudimos atravesar el río We were able to swim across

nadando. the river.

No pudimos abrir la puerta. We could not open the door.

Notes:

1 Poder concorresponds to ‘manage’, ‘cope with’: ¿Puedes con todos esos libros?

‘Can you manage all those books?’. Note also No puedo más‘I can’t stand any

more’.

2 In formal Spanish no poder menos quecorresponds to ‘cannot fail to’ or ‘have

no choice but’: No pude menos que sentirme profundamente agradecido‘I could

not fail to be profoundly grateful’.

Possibility and supposition

The conditional form of podercan also indicate possibility, with the

meaning ‘might’, ‘could’:

No hagas eso, podrías caer. Don’t do that, you might fall.

In this sense, both the conditional and the preterite of poder+ haber+ past

participle can be used to speculate on what could have happened but did

not:

¡Qué susto! Nos podríamos haber salido de la carretera.

What a fright! We could have come off the road.

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Modal
auxiliary
verbs

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Translating English ‘could’

English ‘could’ corresponds not just to preterite pudoand imperfect

podía, but also to conditional podría. Care should be taken not to

use the latter in place of either of the former.

For example, the conditional is correct with reference to futuretime

in Podría ir mañana‘I could go tomorrow’ (= ‘I would be able to go

tomorrow’), but it cannot replace imperfect podíato refer to past

time in Estaba tan borracho que no podía mantenerse de pie‘He was

so drunk he couldn’t stay on his feet’ (= ‘He was so drunk he was

unable stay on his feet’).