Revising Spanish grammar - other tenses and verb forms - AQAThe pluperfect tense

The Spanish pluperfect tense describes a past action that happened before another past action. In other words, it is used to say what someone or something had done. For example:

• Ella había llamado antes de visitar (She had called before visiting).
• Nos habíamos acostado después de terminar nuestros deberes (We had gone to bed after finishing our homework).
• En el pasado habíamos jugado muy bien (In the past, we had played very well).

Like the perfect tense, the pluperfect tense has two parts that are never separated:

1. The imperfect tense of the verbhaber
2. The past participle

The past participle is the equivalent of the English verb form ending in -ed and -en, eg watched, played, visited, eaten, spoken. It is formed by removing the -ar, -er or -ir from the infinitive and adding these endings:

-ar verbs → -ado

-er verbs → -ido

-ir verbs → -ido

Some verbs have irregular past participles. For example:

decir (to say) → dicho

escribir (to write) → escrito

hacer (to make/do) → hecho

ver (to see) → visto