The Past before the Past

It has a big, scary name, but the “Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto” is easy to grasp once you understand its concept.

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It has a big, scary name, but the “Pretérito Pluscuamperfecto” is easy to grasp once you understand its concept. It is the “past before the past.” We use it when, in the same sentence, we talk about something that happened in the past and also something that happened before.

So let’s examine the following situation: Yo llegué a la casa a las 7.30 (A) y mi novio salió de casa a las 6 (B). (I arrived home at 7.30 (A) and my boyfriend went out at 6 (B).)

past---------B---------A---------present

We have two actions that happened in the past and one of them (B) happened before the other one (A). So, how would we discuss both in the same sentence?

Example:

“Cuando llegué a casa mi novio ya había salido”. (When I arrived home, my boyfriend had already gone out).

“Cuando mi novio salió, yo todavía no había llegado”. (When my boyfriend went out, I hadn’t arrived yet.)

As you can see, when we use it this way, we almost always use ya or todavía.

The Pluperfect is formed with the Imperfect Tense of the verb Haber + Past Participle.

Yo había

Vos habías 

Ud./Él/Ella había 

Nosotros-as habíamos 

Uds./Ellos-as habían

 + PAST PARTICIPLE

+ caminar = caminADO

+comer=comIDO

+Vestir=vestIDO

Irregular Past Participle Verbs: Decir/Dicho, Hacer/Hecho, Escribir/Escrito, Morir/Muerto, Volver/Vuelto, Abrir/Abierto, Ver/ Visto, Descubrir/Descubierto, Romper/Roto.

We also use the Pluperfect when we speak about our first experience with something:

“Antes de venir a Buenos Aires nunca había probado el dulce de leche.” (Before coming to Buenos Aires I had never tried dulce de leche.)

“Nunca antes se había maquillado.” (She never put on makeup before.)

We also use Pluperfect to determine the causes of an event:

-Juan y Ana se separaron a los 6 meses de casados. (John and Anna separated after six months of marriage.)

-¿Habían vivido juntos antes?, ¿Se habían peleado anteriormente? (Had they lived together before? Had they fought before?)

Another example:

Louis regresó a Londres el fin de semana pasado. El último año había estado viajando por Latinoamérica. En Inglaterra Louis se puso a dar clases de español porque en Buenos Aires él había aprendido el idioma. (Louis returned to London last weekend. The past year he had been traveling in Latin America. In England, Louis began to give Spanish classes because in Buenos Aires he had learned the language.)

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