For most of the 500 million Spanish speakers on Earth, the future subjunctive is a ghost. It’s a relic they might recognize from the pages of Don Quijote but would never dream of using in conversation. Yet, in the land of the Incas, this phantom from the past still walks, albeit in the hallowed, paper-filled halls of law and administration. How did this complex tense from Spain’s Golden Age find its last refuge in the formal Spanish of Peru?
What Exactly Is This Ghostly Tense?
Before we travel to Peru, let’s define our quarry. The future subjunctive (futuro simple de subjuntivo) is used to express a hypothetical action or state in the future. If that sounds a lot like the present subjunctive, you’ve hit on the very reason for its demise. In modern Spanish, the present subjunctive has almost entirely absorbed its functions.
The future subjunctive is formed by taking the third-person plural of the preterite (e.g., hablaron, comieron, vivieron), dropping the -ron ending, and adding the endings: -re, -res, -re, -remos, -reis, -ren.
- hablar -> hablaron -> hablare
- comer -> comieron -> comiere
- vivir -> vivieron -> viviere
A classic example often seen in old texts is the proverb:
“Adonde fueres, haz lo que vieres.”
In modern Spanish, this would be rendered:
“Adonde vayas, haz lo que veas.” (Wherever you go, do what you see.)
The first version, with fueres and vieres, sounds impossibly archaic to most native speakers today, like a character from a Shakespeare play wandering into a modern-day coffee shop.
A Star of the Golden Age
The future subjunctive wasn’t always a fossil. During the Siglo de Oro (the Spanish Golden Age of the 16th and 17th centuries), it was a vibrant and essential part of the language, especially in literature and legal writing. Miguel de Cervantes was a master of it. The pages of Don Quijote are peppered with future subjunctives, lending the text its characteristic formal and slightly distant tone.
For example, in a conditional clause, Cervantes might write:
“Si tuviere la oportunidad, lo haré.” (If I should have the opportunity, I will do it.)
Today, any speaker would naturally say:
“Si tengo la oportunidad, lo haré.” or “Si tuviera la oportunidad, lo haría.”
So why did it die out? Primarily for efficiency. The present subjunctive (tenga, vaya, vea) and the imperfect subjunctive (tuviera/tuviese) proved flexible enough to cover all the necessary hypothetical ground. The future subjunctive came to be seen as redundant, overly formal, and eventually, obsolete. By the 19th century, it had all but disappeared from spoken language across Spain and its colonies.
The Peruvian Stronghold: A Museum of Formalities
This is where Peru enters the story. While the future subjunctive vanished from the streets of Lima just as it did from Madrid or Mexico City, it clung to life in a very specific ecosystem: the world of legal and administrative writing.
There are a few key reasons for its survival here:
1. The Precision of Legal Language
Lawyers, judges, and notaries prize precision above all else. In a contract or a piece of legislation, ambiguity can lead to chaos. The future subjunctive offers a unique, if subtle, shade of meaning: it refers to a potential future event that is required for the main clause to take effect. It is purely hypothetical and yet legally binding if it occurs.
Consider this phrase, which you might find in the Peruvian penal code or a legal document:
“El que matare a otro será castigado con pena de cárcel.”
Translated literally, it means: “He who should kill another will be punished with a prison sentence.” The use of matare (future subjunctive of matar) establishes a formal, universal legal condition. It’s not referring to a specific act of killing, but any potential act that might occur. While “El que mate…” (present subjunctive) is perfectly grammatical and understood, the future subjunctive carries a weight of unbreakable, timeless law.
2. Linguistic Conservatism
Lima was the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru, the most important administrative center for Spain in South America for centuries. This created a culture of linguistic conservatism in formal registers. The Spanish of the viceregal court and its administration was the standard, and its archaic forms were preserved in officialdom long after they faded from popular use. This historical inertia has helped keep the future subjunctive embedded in the DNA of Peruvian bureaucratic language.
3. A Marker of High Register
In Peru, as elsewhere, using archaic forms can be a way to signal education, authority, and seriousness. For a lawyer drafting a will or a public official writing a decree, employing the future subjunctive is a stylistic choice. It elevates the text, distancing it from everyday speech and wrapping it in an aura of official importance. It says, “This is not a suggestion; this is a formal, binding statement.”
Is It Truly “Alive”?
To call the future subjunctive “alive” in Peru requires a heavy asterisk. It is not alive in the way a language is spoken and breathed in the marketplace or at the family dinner table. You will never hear a Peruvian say, “Cuando llegare a casa, te llamo” (When I get home, I’ll call you). They will, without exception, say “Cuando llegue a casa…”.
Its existence is more akin to that of Latin in the Vatican. It functions within a highly specialized, closed community. It’s a tool for a specific trade, learned and used by legal professionals. For the average Peruvian, it’s as foreign as it is to a Spaniard or a Colombian. They might encounter it if they read a rental contract or a public law, but it’s not part of their active linguistic toolkit.
The future subjunctive in Peru is, therefore, the perfect linguistic fossil: beautifully preserved, but only visible in a museum of formal text. It’s a ghost from the age of Cervantes that has found a quiet, eternal home in the legal codes of a South American republic, reminding us that languages die in pieces, and sometimes, the most surprising pieces are the ones that refuse to let go.