The Spanish Conditional Tense: Hablaría, Podría, Me Gustaría

The Spanish conditional tense is how you say would: hablaría, I would speak. It’s also the tense that turns an order into a request. Picture yourself at the door of a busy restaurant in Bogotá, asking for a table:

Both get you the table, but the second sounds like “I’d like” instead of “I want.” That softening is the job you’ll use most. The forms are quick; the uses are where English speakers slip, because English would doesn’t always mean the conditional.

How to form the Spanish conditional tense

Take the whole infinitive and add -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -íais, -ían. For the conditional tense, Spanish conjugation couldn’t be simpler: one set of endings for -ar, -er and -ir verbs alike.

Person	hablar	comer	vivir
yo	hablaría	comería	viviría
tú / vos	hablarías	comerías	vivirías
él, ella, usted	hablaría	comería	viviría
nosotros	hablaríamos	comeríamos	viviríamos
vosotros (Spain)	hablaríais	comeríais	viviríais
ellos, ellas, ustedes	hablarían	comerían	vivirían

Three things to notice:

• The í always has an accent, in every person: hablaría, hablaríamos.
• Yo and él look the same. Hablaría is “I would speak” or “she would speak.” Add the pronoun when the context doesn’t make it clear: Yo hablaría con él.
• Vos uses the tú form here too: vos hablarías.

Comía or comería? The -ía you already know

If you’ve learned the imperfect, those endings look familiar. The imperfect of -er and -ir verbs ends in -ía too: comía, “I used to eat.” The difference is what comes before the ending. The imperfect drops the -er; the conditional keeps the whole infinitive.

Irregular stems: the same 12 as the future

The conditional borrows its irregular stems from the future, so these twelve are the whole list: tendría, pondría, saldría, vendría, valdría · podría, sabría, querría, habría, cabría · diría, haría. Why they shorten, and the three groups that make them easy to remember, are in the Spanish future tense lesson.

Even the irregulars keep it short: in the conditional tense, Spanish conjugation only changes the stem. The endings don’t move:

Person	tener	poder	hacer	decir
yo	tendría	podría	haría	diría
tú / vos	tendrías	podrías	harías	dirías
él, ella, usted	tendría	podría	haría	diría
nosotros	tendríamos	podríamos	haríamos	diríamos
vosotros (Spain)	tendríais	podríais	haríais	diríais
ellos, ellas, ustedes	tendrían	podrían	harían	dirían

And hay becomes habría, always singular: habría más gente, never “habrían.”

When to use the conditional tense

The conditional tense has five everyday jobs. Each one has an English cue, and most of them involve would, could or should.

1. Polite requests and wishes, with me gustaría or podría.
2. Advice, with deberías (“you should”) or yo en tu lugar (“if I were you”).
3. Hypotheses: what would happen in another situation.
4. The future seen from the past, after a verb like dijo or pensé.
5. A guess about the past, the way the future guesses about the present: serían las diez is “it was probably ten” (NGLE §23.15j).

The verbs you’ll use most in the conditional are poder, deber and gustar. Learn podría, debería and me gustaría as chunks and you’ve covered most polite Spanish.

Polite Spanish, one step at a time

Here’s the same request, from blunt to very polite. All four are correct; the conditional is what lifts the last two.

These use usted (trae, podría), the usual choice with a waiter or a stranger in most of Latin America. You’ll also hear quisiera (Quisiera la cuenta), from the imperfect subjunctive. With querer, poder and deber, the Real Academia’s grammar says the two forms can alternate (NGLE §23.15u), as long as it’s the -ra form: “quisiese la cuenta” doesn’t work.

Not every “would” is a conditional

English would does several jobs, and only one of them is the Spanish conditional. Ask what the would means before you reach for -ía.

A quick test for the first trap: if you can swap would for used to, it’s the imperfect. The second one, no quiso, is one of the verbs that change meaning in the preterite, covered in preterite vs imperfect.

Conditional or future?

Same build, same twelve stems, so the two are easy to mix up. The future looks forward from now; the conditional looks forward from the past, or into a “what if.”

Future	Conditional
hablaré: I will speak	hablaría: I would speak
Serán las tres. It’s probably three (now).	Serían las diez. It was probably ten (then).
Dice que vendrá. She says she’ll come.	Dijo que vendría. She said she would come.

How native speakers use the conditional

Four clips from Easy Spanish videos, with speakers from Mexico and Colombia. The first two are the polite conditional in action.

Replay the clip1 of 4

1. Oigan, ¿les podría hacer una entrevista de dos minutos?Excuse me, could I do a two-minute interview with you? · Easy Spanish · Mexico
2. Ahora me gustaría saber un poco acerca de su historia.Now I'd like to know a little about your story. · Easy Spanish · Mexicans in Berlin
3. Yo si fuera tú, cambiaría de ruta.If I were you, I'd change routes. · Super Easy Spanish · Colombia
4. O si no tuvieras que trabajar, ¿qué harías?Or if you didn't have to work, what would you do? · Easy Spanish · Mexico

The last two show the if pattern from above: si fuera, si no tuvieras in the first half, the conditional in the second.

Frequently asked questions

Is the conditional a tense or a mood?

It’s a tense of the indicative. Grammarians have long argued about it, and the view generally accepted today, the one in the Real Academia’s grammar, is that it’s a tense. Part of the reason: it shows up where the indicative does (Prometió que iría) and never where the subjunctive is required (NGLE §23.15a).

Querría or quisiera?

Both are correct for “I’d like.” In a request, quisiera is the more common one, and it avoids a listening problem: spoken fast, querría (“I would want”) sounds a lot like quería (“I wanted”). And me gustaría works everywhere.

How do you say “would have” in Spanish?

Use habría plus the past participle: habría ido, “I would have gone.” That compound form gets a short section in the Spanish present perfect lesson, next to the other tenses built with haber.

Is “si tendría” ever correct?

Not in standard Spanish. The Real Academia records it in casual speech in parts of Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, the Andes, Chile, southern Colombia and northern Spain, and recommends avoiding it (NGLE §23.15d). You may hear it, but don’t write it: si tuviera.

Try the conditional: six sentences

Choose the right form. After each answer you’ll see why.

For more, the Spanish future tense practice page mixes in a few conditional sentences with audio and has a printable worksheet, and the conjugation trainer set to the conditional drills any of the 150 most common verbs.

Two roads lead on from here. The si tuviera half of the if sentence is the imperfect subjunctive, and would have (habría ido) lives with the compound tenses in the present perfect.