If you want to say what you would do, what you would like, or what could happen, you need the conditional tense. It is the Spanish equivalent of would + verb in English, and it shows up everywhere: in polite requests, in advice, in daydreams, and in hypothetical scenarios of all kinds.
The good news is that the conditional is one of the easiest tenses to conjugate in Spanish. There is only one set of endings for all verbs, and the list of irregular verbs is short. Let's break it all down.
One tense, one word
In English, we build the conditional with the modal verb would: I would sing, she would eat, they would travel. In Spanish, the conditional is a true verb tense: cantaría, comería, viajarían.
Just like the future tense, the conditional attaches its endings to the infinitive of the verb. You don't drop the -ar, -er, or -ir. You keep the whole infinitive and add the ending after it.
Conjugating regular verbs in the conditional
All three verb types share one set of endings: -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -íais, and -ían. Every single one carries a written accent. Here is hablar (to speak):
yo hablaría
tú hablarías
él/ella/usted hablaría
nosotros/nosotras hablaríamos
vosotros/vosotras hablaríais
ellos/ellas/ustedes hablarían
Here is comer (to eat):
yo comería
tú comerías
él/ella/usted comería
nosotros/nosotras comeríamos
vosotros/vosotras comeríais
ellos/ellas/ustedes comerían
And here is vivir (to live):
yo viviría
tú vivirías
él/ella/usted viviría
nosotros/nosotras viviríamos
vosotros/vosotras viviríais
ellos/ellas/ustedes vivirían
Notice that the yo form and the él/ella/usted form are identical. Context (or an explicit subject pronoun) tells you who is doing the action.
Some examples:
Yo nunca cenaría en ese restaurante otra vez. (I would never have dinner at that restaurant again.)
Paula nunca viajaría sin su cámara. (Paula would never travel without her camera.)
Yo viviría en la playa todo el año. (I would live at the beach all year.)
Verbs with an irregular conditional
Here is a rule you will love: the conditional shares its irregular verbs with the future tense, stem for stem. If you already know that tener becomes tendré in the future, you know that it becomes tendría in the conditional. Learn the stems once, and you get two tenses for the price of one.
The most important irregular stems:
tener → tendr- (tendría)
hacer → har- (haría)
decir → dir- (diría)
poder → podr- (podría)
saber → sabr- (sabría)
haber → habr- (habría)
The endings stay completely regular. Here is tener (to have) in full:
yo tendría
tú tendrías
él/ella/usted tendría
nosotros/nosotras tendríamos
vosotros/vosotras tendríais
ellos/ellas/ustedes tendrían
Some examples:
Yo nunca tendría un gato. (I would never have a cat.)
¿Qué harías con dos meses de vacaciones? (What would you do with two months of vacation?)
Andrés siempre te diría lo que piensa. (Andrés would always tell you what he thinks.)
Note that ser, estar, and ir are all regular in the conditional: sería, estaría, and iría.
The future and the conditional side by side
Since the two tenses share the same infinitive-based stems, it helps to see them together. The future talks about what will happen; the conditional talks about what would happen.
Yo diré la verdad. (I will tell the truth.)
Yo diría la verdad. (I would tell the truth.)
Él tendrá tiempo mañana. (He will have time tomorrow.)
Él tendría tiempo si trabajara menos. (He would have time if he worked less.)
Sabremos la respuesta pronto. (We will know the answer soon.)
Sabríamos la respuesta si preguntáramos. (We would know the answer if we asked.)
If you mix up the endings, remember this: the future endings vary from person to person (-é, -ás, -á, and so on), while the conditional endings all contain -ía.
The main uses of the conditional
Now that you can build the forms, let's look at what the conditional actually does.
Hypothetical situations
This is the core use: talking about imaginary or unreal situations. What would you do? What would life be like?
Yo iría a Buenos Aires en marzo. (I would go to Buenos Aires in March.)
Creo que sería chef en un restaurante pequeño. (I think I would be a chef in a small restaurant.)
Yo diría que Andrés tiene razón. (I would say Andrés is right.)
¿Vivirías en otro país? (Would you live in another country?)
Polite requests
The conditional softens a request. Compare ¿Puedes ayudarme? (Can you help me?) with the gentler conditional version:
¿Podrías ayudarme? (Could you help me?)
¿Podrías envolverlo para regalo? (Could you gift-wrap it?)
¿Me dirías la hora, por favor? (Would you tell me the time, please?)
This works just like English. Could you and would you sound more courteous than can you, and podrías sounds more courteous than puedes.
Advice with deber
English should translates as debería, which is simply deber in the conditional. This is the standard way to give advice in Spanish.
Deberías dormir más. (You should sleep more.)
Deberíamos llamar a tu madre. (We should call your mother.)
No deberían gastar tanto dinero. (They shouldn't spend so much money.)
Wishes with gustar
One of the most common phrases in all of Spanish is me gustaría (I would like). Remember that gustar works backwards: literally, me gustaría means it would please me or it would be pleasing to me.
Me gustaría trabajar en una librería. (I would like to work in a bookstore.)
Me gustaría visitar Oaxaca este otoño. (I would like to visit Oaxaca this fall.)
¿Te gustaría probar el postre de la casa? (Would you like to try the house dessert?)
Nos gustaría ver el menú. (We would like to see the menu.)
The future in the past
The conditional also reports what someone said or thought about the future, seen from a point in the past. English does the same thing: will becomes would.
Sara dijo que llamaría hoy. (Sara said she would call today.)
Pensé que llegarían a tiempo. (I thought they would arrive on time.)
Sabíamos que el examen sería difícil. (We knew the exam would be difficult.)
The conditional of haber and the conditional perfect
The verb haber deserves its own section. In the conditional it becomes habría:
yo habría
tú habrías
él/ella/usted habría
nosotros/nosotras habríamos
vosotros/vosotras habríais
ellos/ellas/ustedes habrían
Each form means would have. We use habría plus a past participle to build the conditional perfect (condicional compuesto), the tense for things that could have happened but didn't.
Yo habría reservado una mesa. (I would have reserved a table.)
Paula no habría aceptado el trabajo. (Paula would not have accepted the job.)
Habríamos llegado más temprano. (We would have arrived earlier.)
A quick look at si clauses
The conditional is the star of hypothetical si (if) sentences, the kind that imagine how life would be different. In these sentences, the supposition goes in the imperfect subjunctive and the result goes in the conditional:
Si yo tuviera más vacaciones, viajaría por toda Sudamérica. (If I had more vacation days, I would travel all over South America.)
Viajaría por toda Sudamérica si tuviera más vacaciones. (I would travel all over South America if I had more vacation days.)
There is a lot more to say about these structures, including the past version with hubiera and habría. We cover all of it, with all three types of conditional sentences, in our companion article on conditional sentences in Spanish.
The conditional gives you a huge amount of expressive power for very little grammatical effort. One set of endings, a handful of irregular stems you already know from the future tense, and you can make requests, give advice, express wishes, and imagine other lives.