The Spanish conditional: would
You will learn the Spanish conditional to sound polite, give advice, and talk about what you would like to do. It is extremely common in everyday requests because it softens what you say. It also helps you talk about the future as seen from a past moment.
The rule
The Spanish condicional is a high-value tense: you use it to sound more tactful, to give advice, and to express wishes. In real life you hear it constantly in requests, customer service, and everyday conversations. It is not only for imagining situations, it is especially for softening what you say.
How to form it: take the exact same stem as the futuro simple, including the same irregular stems, and add the endings -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -íais, -ían. Key detail: every ending has a written accent on í, so every conditional form carries a tilde. This is not optional, it is part of the spelling.
At a glance
Conditional endings (same endings for -ar, -er, -ir)
| Persona | Terminación |
|---|---|
| yo | -ía |
| tú | -ías |
| él/ella/usted | -ía |
| nosotros/nosotras | -íamos |
| vosotros/vosotras | -íais |
| ellos/ellas/ustedes | -ían |
Heard in real Spanish
Native speakers on YouTube, in videos about something other than grammar. The notion is in pink. Each clip starts a second before the line.
Eventualmente, abandonaría sus estudios antes de terminar la secundaria.
Eventually, he would drop out of school before finishing high school.
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No sé cómo decir esto, pero creo que deberíamos dejarlo.
I don't know how to say this, but I think we should break up.
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Examples
- Querría un café, por favor.I would like a coffee, please.“Querría” is a very common polite ordering formula.
- ¿Podría ayudarme, por favor?Could you help me, please?Polite question with “¿Podría…?”.
- ¿Te importaría abrir la ventana?Would you mind opening the window?“¿Te importaría…?” is a soft way to ask for a favor.
What to remember
- The conditional uses the future stem plus -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -íais, -ían.
- Every conditional form has a written accent on í.
- The conditional is key for polite requests: “Querría…”, “¿Podría…?”, “¿Te importaría…?”.
- For advice, use “Deberías…”, “Sería mejor…”, and the fixed formula “Yo que tú, …”.
- After a past verb, the conditional can express future-from-the-past: “Dijo que vendría”.
Check yourself
1 Fill the gap with the correct conditional form for a polite request.
___ un café, por favor.
- Querría
- Quiero
- Querré
- Quería
Show the answer
Querría. “Querría” is a common polite ordering form in the conditional, and it must have the accent.
2 Choose the most polite sentence to ask for help.
- ¿Podría ayudarme, por favor?
- ¿Puedes ayudarme, por favor?
- ¿Poder ayudarme, por favor?
- ¿Podrías ayudóme, por favor?
Show the answer
¿Podría ayudarme, por favor?. “¿Podría ayudarme…?” uses the conditional of “poder”, which softens the request.
Take the full lesson
“The conditional: would” in the Streal course: the whole explanation, the quiz, and every YouTube extract picked for it. Free to start, nothing to install. The full lesson goes on with the rest of the explanation and more examples, the common mistakes and the practice quiz.