The verb Haber is really complex, but very common! How are you going to keep track of all of its strange forms?
This verb can be tricky, but today we’re going to conquer it.
This guide is a followup to Haber, Part 1 (you can check that out here). Today, in Part 2, we’re going to work on the more complex forms of the verb Haber.
In this video, you’ll learn how to use Haber in the past tense and two subjunctive forms, as well as the infinitive.
For a quick recap of the present tense, let’s review how Haber is used as a helping verb, to put other verbs in the past. For example:
In each case, the little conjugation of Haber — like he, ha, or han — is just there to support the other verb, like hecho or estado. Together, they help us say something has happened in the past.
When you want to say “there is” or “there are” some things, you use hay. Even though it seems like it doesn’t belong with the others, it’s actually the most common form of Haber! Hay is used to talk about existence. For example:
Now that we’ve reviewed these basics, let’s move forward with the rest of our list. We’ll start with había.
Había is a past-tense form of Haber, and you can use it to put hay in the past. So hay means “there is” or “there are”, and había means “there was” or “there were”.
Let’s look at some examples. Here’s a sentence that we used earlier:
Now let’s put it in the past.
Here’s another example:
Let’s put this in the past:
Last example:
Any time you would use “there was” or “there were” in English, you’re probably going to use había in Spanish.
Just like hay, this word doesn’t refer to any specific person, like “I” or “we” or “you” — instead, it’s what we call an impersonal verb. It just tells you that something existed at some time in the past.
Let’s practice with some examples. I’m going to give you a few sentences in English that should be translated to use either hay or había. Try to guess the Spanish, and make sure to speak the sentence out loud for the best possible practice.
ANSWERS:
Next, let’s take a look at the infinitive form of this verb: haber.
To keep it super simple, let’s look at the most common way this form shows up in real life: va a haber.
As you can probably tell, we’re using va a to put the verb Haber in the future. If you don’t know how that works, check out our Top 10 Forms of Ir guide — you’ll learn how to use Ir to put other verbs in the future.
Here’s a quick recap of that trick. We can use Ir to put any verb we want in the future. For example:
Now we’re going to do the same thing with va a haber. This means “there is going to be” or “there are going to be”.
Here are some examples:
Notice that in each case, it’s always va a haber — whether the English is “there is” or “there are”.
Let’s get some quick practice with this right now. Try to guess the Spanish out loud:
ANSWERS
OK, I admit that was really easy — let’s kick things up a notch.
Next on our list is haya. This is a subjunctive form, and it’s tricky but super important.
The word haya is used when someone wants something to exist, or wants there to be something.
Here’s a super common sentence structure that uses it:
We’re not saying “there is a party” (that would be hay). We’re saying “I want there to be a party” — and that’s when we switch to haya.
Let’s break this down. What we can do is start with any sentence that would use hay, for example:
But if instead, someone wants this to be the case, we’ll put quiero que at the beginning, which literally means “I want that”. Then we’ll change hay to haya. So we have:
Literally, “I want that there be someone here.”
Here are a few more examples:
So notice that each time, we’re talking about the existence of something, but we’re not stating it as a fact — instead, it’s an intention or desire. That’s when we use haya.
(To get more practice with subjunctives like this, check out our guide to Subjunctive sentence structures.)
Let’s practice haya. I’m going to give you a tricky quiz here — your job is to predict whether you need haya or va a haber. Remember, we use haya when we want there to be something, and we use va a haber when it’s more certain that there will be something. Try to fill in the blanks.
ANSWERS:
Now for the last form on our list: the word hubiera.
In technical terms, hubiera is what we call a past subjunctive. It’s most often used to express something hypothetical — something we know isn’t actually true!
Why is this so common? Well, let’s look at an example in English:
So in this sentence, we’re not saying that there are more people — we’re just imagining it. We know it’s not true. Basically, this is a “what if” situation. And in Spanish, that’s when we use hubiera.
So this sentence becomes:
Here’s another example:
Once again, we’re talking about existence, just like we did with hay and había. But instead of saying “there is” or “there was”, we’re basically saying “what if there were…”
Here are a couple more examples:
This might sound kind of advanced, but it’s actually very common in real conversations — especially when people are imagining or wishing things were different.
So any time you catch yourself saying “If there were…” — that’s your cue to use hubiera.
We’re not going to quiz this one just yet — if you want to practice it in real depth, check out Lesson 77 in our free course. That lesson is packed with examples and flashcards to help you master this form.
Let’s review everything we learned in these two guides.
Normally, the present tense forms of Haber are used to put another verb in the past — for example:
But Haber has an extra present-tense form, hay, which is used to talk about existence. For example:
For existence in the past tense, you’ll use había, as in:
For existence in the future, you’ll use va a haber. For example:
If you want something to exist, you’ll use haya. For example:
And if you’re saying “what if” something exists, you’ll use hubiera. For example:
That covers all the 10 most important forms of Haber — one of the weirdest but most essential verbs in all of Spanish.
Believe it or not, there are even more ways to use these forms of Haber. For example, all the forms that we learned today can actually be used along with other verbs to put those verbs in complex tenses, like the past of the past or the past of the future.
To see how this works, and to keep practicing Haber to perfection, check out our free course. This is a complete system with guided lessons, flashcards, and quizzes that will make Haber and other core Spanish verbs feel totally natural. You can learn about Haber in lessons 36, 48, and 77, and each lesson is packed with evidence-based study tools designed to make everything stick.
