llegar means: to arrive, to come, to reach
Click to see all conjugation charts of llegar in every tense

In this Spanish conjugation lesson we will see how to inflect the verb llegar in the Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto tense of the Indicativo mood. It means we will see step by step how to create and translate forms of each grammatical person.

How to translate Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto 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 Perfecto Compuesto 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 inflected verb form is one word long.

In a compound tense the endings of the auxiliary verb change, not the endings 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 Perfecto Compuesto de Indicativo tense, we use the Presente de Indicativo (Present) conjugation of haber
• Past Participle, which is always the same in every compound tense for a given verb

Refer to the conjugation charts and this haber conjugation lesson 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 llegar 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 start by splitting the infinitive into a stem and an ending. It’s very 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: lleg-
• and the ending is: -ar

Based on the ending of the infinitive we can recognize that llegar 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: llegado.

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 Presente de Indicativo, which is he. To that we add the Participio llegado to get he llegado:

• yo he llegado – I have arrived

Next, to create the form for the second person singular, we again simply take the second person singular form of haber from the Presente de Indicativo tense, and that is has. And to this auxiliary verb we add the Participio llegado (so the exact same word as previously) to get has llegado:

• tú has llegado – you have arrived

Similarly, if we want to create the form for the third person singular, we conjugate haber in the Presente tense and we use the corresponding person’s form (third person singular), namely ha. Then we also take the same Participio as for all other persons, and putting them together we get ha llegado:

• él ha llegado – he has arrived
• ella ha llegado – she has arrived
• usted ha llegado – (formal) you have arrived

The first person plural has the form hemos llegado. 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 Presente de Indicativo tense: hemos. Second, and to this word we again add the Participio of llegar: llegado to get hemos llegado:

• nosotros hemos llegado – we have arrived
• nosotras hemos llegado – (feminine) we have arrived

Again, let’s do the same for the second person plural. We need to get the conjugated form of the verb haber in the Presente de Indicativo tense, second person plural, and that’s habéis. Next, we take the unchanged Participio, we join them, and we get habéis llegado:

• vosotros habéis llegado – (plural) you have arrived
• vosotras habéis llegado – (feminine, plural) you have arrived

And finally, the last grammatical person on the list, the third person plural, has the form han llegado. 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 Presente conjugation. It is han. We add the Participio of llegar again (llegado) to get han llegado:

• ellos han llegado – they have arrived
• ellas han llegado – (feminine) they have arrived
• ustedes han llegado – (formal, plural) you have arrived

That’s it! The conjugation is now done. Put together, the conjugation chart looks like this:

yo	he llegado	I have arrived
tú	has llegado	you have arrived
él/ella/usted	ha llegado	he/she/it has arrived
nosotros/nosotras	hemos llegado	we have arrived
vosotros/vosotras	habéis llegado	you have arrived
ellos/ellas/ustedes	han llegado	they have arrived

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

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 PluscuamperfectoFuturo PerfectoCondicional PerfectoPretérito Perfecto Compuesto (subjuntivo)Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto A (subjuntivo)Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto B (subjuntivo)Futuro Perfecto (subjuntivo)  For exercises and examples related to llegar visit our Exercise section To see conjugation charts in all tenses for llegar visit the Conjugator To explore other learning materials visit the Study section

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