complacer means: to please, to satisfy
Click to see all conjugation charts of complacer in every tense

In this Spanish conjugation lesson we are going to learn how to conjugate the verb complacer in the Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto A tense of the Subjuntivo mood. It means we will see step by step how to create and translate forms of each grammatical person.

How to translate Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto A to English

Notice that the phrases in English provided below next to each conjugation are not direct translations from Spanish to English. They are usually the closest general equivalents. The example differences are:

• In Spanish conjugation, there is the form usted in the third person singular. But this person does not translate to the English third person singular. It translates to the so called formal you and uses the inflected form which is most often represented as he/she/it in English conjugation charts.
• Similar situation happens in the third person plural, where ustedes translates to the English plural formal you but uses the form which corresponds to the they form in English.
• Tenses are used differently in Spanish and English, so the actual translation should always take into account the context and focus on translating the meaning, not just words.
• In both languages each verb may have multiple meanings and not every meaning translates directly to the other language. Here also, the context and focusing on the particular meaning helps to create the most accurate translation.

Step by step instructions

Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto A is a compound tense (Spanish: compuesto). It means that all of its inflected forms consist of two words. In Spanish language, there are also simple tenses, where each conjugated verb form is one word long.

A compound tense is indicated by the ending of the auxiliary verb, not by the ending of the main verb, which is the case in Spanish simple tenses.In the compound tenses, every person’s form consist of two parts:

• A conjugated form of the auxiliary verb haber. In case of the Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto de Subjuntivo A tense, we use the Pretérito Imperfecto de Subjuntivo A (Imperfect Subjunctive A) conjugation of haber
• Past Participle, which is always the same in every compound tense for a given verb

Check out the conjugation charts to learn how to conjugate the auxiliary verb haber. That’s a separate topic, so for brevity we will focus on the parts derived from complacer only in this lesson.In order to create the Participio form, we need a stem and an ending. We use the stem of the infinitive of the main verb, and a single ending, which depends on the conjugation group of the main verb. So we begin by splitting the infinitive into a stem and an ending. It’s easy to do – simply remove two letters from the end of the infinitive form and you have the ending – one of -ar, -er, -ir. What’s left is the stem.So for our verb:

• the stem is: complac-
• and the ending is: -er

Based on the ending of the infinitive we can recognize that complacer belongs to the -er verb group. This group, in turn, uses the -ido ending in its Participio form. Putting all that together, our Participio is: complacido.

And now, as we understand how both parts used by this tense are created separately, let’s move on with creating the final conjugation forms. In order to create the first person singular form, we simply take the first person singular form of haber conjugated in Pretérito Imperfecto de Subjuntivo A, which is hubiera. And to that we add the Participio complacido to get hubiera complacido:

• yo hubiera complacido – I had pleased

Next, to create the form for the second person singular, we again need to take the second person singular form of haber from the Pretérito Imperfecto de Subjuntivo A tense, and it is hubieras. And to this auxiliary verb we add the Participio complacido (so the exact same word as previously) to get hubieras complacido:

• tú hubieras complacido – you had pleased

Similarly, if we want to create the form for the third person singular, we conjugate haber in the Pretérito Imperfecto A tense and we utilize the corresponding person’s form (third person singular), namely hubiera. Then we also take the same Participio as for all other persons, and putting them together we get hubiera complacido:

• él hubiera complacido – he had pleased
• ella hubiera complacido – she had pleased
• usted hubiera complacido – (formal) you had pleased

The first person plural has the form hubiéramos complacido. It’s created by following the same logic as in the other persons. We first take the form of the first person plural from haber conjugation in the Pretérito Imperfecto de Subjuntivo A tense: hubiéramos. Second, to this word we again add the Participio of complacer: complacido to get hubiéramos complacido:

• nosotros hubiéramos complacido – we had pleased
• nosotras hubiéramos complacido – (feminine) we had pleased

Again, let’s do the same for the second person plural. We have to get the conjugated form of the verb haber in the Pretérito Imperfecto de Subjuntivo A tense, second person plural, and that’s hubierais. Next, we take our unchanged Participio, we join them, and we get hubierais complacido:

• vosotros hubierais complacido – (plural) you had pleased
• vosotras hubierais complacido – (feminine, plural) you had pleased

And finally, the last grammatical person on the list, the third person plural, has the form hubieran complacido. We create it in the exact same manner as in all the other grammatical persons. We need the third person plural of haber first, from its Pretérito Imperfecto A conjugation. It is hubieran. We add the Participio of complacer again (complacido) to get hubieran complacido:

• ellos hubieran complacido – they had pleased
• ellas hubieran complacido – (feminine) they had pleased
• ustedes hubieran complacido – (formal, plural) you had pleased

This is it! The conjugation is now finished. Put together, the conjugation chart looks like this:

yo	hubiera complacido	I had pleased
tú	hubieras complacido	you had pleased
él/ella/usted	hubiera complacido	he/she/it had pleased
nosotros/nosotras	hubiéramos complacido	we had pleased
vosotros/vosotras	hubierais complacido	you had pleased
ellos/ellas/ustedes	hubieran complacido	they had pleased

Click to see all conjugation charts of complacer in every tense
But do not end your session yet – it’s important to repeat and practice the material in order to retain it. Check below for some links.

Next Steps to Perfection To practice this conjugation and test your knowledge try this Conjugation Exercise or the Memory Game To see other conjugation lessons for this verb choose another tense: PresentePretéritoImperfectoCondicionalFuturoPretérito Perfecto CompuestoPretérito PluscuamperfectoFuturo PerfectoCondicional PerfectoPretérito Perfecto Compuesto (subjuntivo)Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto B (subjuntivo)Futuro Perfecto (subjuntivo)  For exercises and examples related to complacer visit our Exercise section To see conjugation charts in all tenses for complacer visit the Conjugator To explore other learning materials visit the Study section

---