gastar means: to spend, to use up, to wear out
Click to see all conjugation charts of gastar in every tense

In this conjugation lesson we will learn how to conjugate the verb gastar 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 conjugated 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 gastar only here.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 have to 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 and you have the ending – one of -ar, -er, -ir. What’s left is the stem.So for gastar:

• the stem is: gast-
• and the ending is: -ar

Based on the ending of the infinitive we can recognize that gastar belongs to the -ar verb group. This group, in turn, uses the -ado ending in its Participio form. Putting all that together, our Participio is: gastado.

Now, as we understand how both parts used by this tense are created separately, we can proceed with creating the final conjugation forms. In order to create the first person singular form, we need to take the first person singular form of haber conjugated in Pretérito Imperfecto de Subjuntivo A, which is hubiera. To that we add the Participio gastado to get hubiera gastado:

• yo hubiera gastado – I had spent

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 gastado (so the exact same word as previously) to get hubieras gastado:

• tú hubieras gastado – you had spent

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 gastado:

• él hubiera gastado – he had spent
• ella hubiera gastado – she had spent
• usted hubiera gastado – (formal) you had spent

The first person plural has the form hubiéramos gastado. 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 gastar: gastado to get hubiéramos gastado:

• nosotros hubiéramos gastado – we had spent
• nosotras hubiéramos gastado – (feminine) we had spent

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 it’s hubierais. Next, we take our unchanged Participio, we join them, and we get hubierais gastado:

• vosotros hubierais gastado – (plural) you had spent
• vosotras hubierais gastado – (feminine, plural) you had spent

And finally, the last grammatical person on the list, the third person plural, has the form hubieran gastado. 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 gastar again (gastado) to get hubieran gastado:

• ellos hubieran gastado – they had spent
• ellas hubieran gastado – (feminine) they had spent
• ustedes hubieran gastado – (formal, plural) you had spent

¡Ya está! The conjugation is now finished. That’s the final result:

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

Click to see all conjugation charts of gastar 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 suggestions.

Next Steps to Perfection To practice this conjugation and test yourself check 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 gastar visit our Exercise section To see conjugation charts in all tenses for gastar visit the Conjugator To explore other learning materials visit the Study section

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