Habrían

Habrían is the third-person plural form of the conditional simple of the auxiliary verb haber. It is used to form the conditional perfect (condicional compuesto) together with a past participle, indicating an action that would have occurred in the past under certain conditions. For example: habrían llegado means "they would have arrived."

The form that often causes confusion with it is hubieran, the imperfect subjunctive of haber. Hubieran is used in subordinate clauses to express past counterfactuals (often in si-clauses), whereas habrían appears in the main clause of a conditional construction. Context thus determines whether the sentence conveys a hypothetical past outcome (habrían) or a past subjunctive condition (hubieran).

Common usage patterns include:

- Ellos habrían comprado la casa si hubieran tenido suficiente dinero. (They would have bought the house if they had had enough money.)

- Si hubieran llegado antes, habrían visto el inicio de la película. (If they had arrived earlier, they would have seen the start of the movie.)

Notes:

- Habrían also appears in isolation only as part of the full compound tense with a participle, never as a standalone verb form.

- It is more frequent in written or formal Spanish, especially in hypothetical narratives or reports, than in everyday spoken language, where simpler constructions may be used.

See also: haber, condicional (condicional simple), condicional compuesto, pluscuamperfecto de subjuntivo.