Which Spanish Verb Do You Think is the Most Import...
Spanish verbs are probably the most difficult and the most complex areas of the Spanish Language. Spanish verbs are split into three major groups, those verbs that end in -ar, -er and -ir, every verb in these verb groups has multiple endings to show who or what is performing an action.
There are also a large number of irregular verbs that follow their own specific verb formation that must also be studied and a lot of of these are used often in daily conversation such as, ‘to have‘ and ‘to be‘.
The difficulties do not stop there as there are 16 different tenses that are all conjugated differently, these sixteen tenses are split into eight simple tenses and 8 perfect (compound) tenses and it is these perfect tenses that will give you an idea as to which verb many, and that includes myself, identify as being the most important verb in Spanish.
There are 4 distinct types of Spanish verb and they are; irregular, regular, auxiliary and reflexive but there is 1 specific auxiliary verb that is used with the past participle of each Spanish verb in all of the eight compound tenses. The verb that I am referring to is ‘haber‘ which means ‘to have‘.
Understanding, and knowing, the various conjugations of haber makes it possible to use verbs more extensively as all compound tenses can be utilized.
Compound tenses are those tenses that indicate a completed task, ie: ‘I have been‘, ‘I had been‘, ‘I was‘, ‘I will have been‘, and, ‘I would have been‘, are all compound tenses that will use haber as the auxiliary verb.
In both English and Spanish, the compound tenses are formed by using ‘to have‘, followed by the past participle (el participio in Spanish). In English, the participle is typically formed by adding -ed to the end of verbs; the Spanish participle, which has origins related to the English participle is formed by adding -ado for -ar verbs and -ido for -er and -ir verbs.
The verb tense in the perfect tenses is decided by which simple tense of haber is being used: for example if we said: ‘I have eaten‘ and ‘I will have eaten‘ the only way to distinguish between the two would be the tense of the auxiliary verb being used; ‘I have eaten‘ = he comido and ‘I will have eaten‘ = habré comido.
It isn’t feasible to show the complete conjugation of haber for each tense in Spanish as there are so many but the example below highlights how haber is used, using the past participle of the verb andar, meaning ‘to walk’, in the first person singular for each of the perfect tenses:
Indicative Tenses
- Present Perfect - he andado I have walked
- Pluperfect – había andado I had walked
- Past Perfect – hube andado I walked
- Future Perfect – habré andado I will have walked
- Conditional Perfect - habría andado I would have walked
Subjunctive
- Present Perfect – haya andado I have walked
- Pluperfect - hubiera or hubiese andado I had walked
- Future Perfect – hubiera andado I will have walked
So there you have it, haber, is the most used verb in Spanish verb conjugation and as such rightfully earns the honor of being the most important of Irregular Spanish verbs. Obviously, the use of a full conjugation sheet for the Spanish verb haber would make the use of this auxiliary verb a great deal easier to understand.

