Continuous tenses

Mañana estaré volando a Ibiza

In the previous sections there were three lessons about Spanish continuous tenses: Presente Continuo, Indefinido Continuo and Imperfecto Continuo. They can be considered separate tenses, or just different cases of using the estar + gerundio construction, where estar takes forms of Presente, Indefinido and Imperfecto, respectively.

1.

Normalmente ceno a las ocho

Ahora estoy cenando

2.

Ayer Josué ayudó a su tío

Ayer Josué estuvo ayudando a su tío todo el día

3.

Cuando dormíamos, sonó el despertador

Cuando estábamos durmiendo, sonó el despertador

As you can probably imagine, the verb estar can be changed to any tense that exists in Spanish, not only these three. In other words, any Spanish tense can be changed to continuous. This is what we’ll talk about in this lesson. We’ll take the rest of the tenses, that have already been covered throughout this course, and make them continuous.

Remember, that when we use estar + gerundio, we add some progress to actions, we make them longer. This way actions become continuous.

Let’s have a look at how and when we can make use of estar + gerundio in different tenses, and what that means.

Futuro Próximo Continuo

Por la tarde voy a estar tomando el sol dos o tres horas – In the afternoon I’m going to be sunbathing for two or three hours

Javier y Carla no van a venir. Van a estar pintando la valla toda la mañana – Javier and Carla aren’t going to come. They are going to be painting the fence all morning

Futuro Próximo Continuo (voy a hacer) can be transformed into a continuous process, when we want to say, that somebody is going to be doing something for a long period of time. As Futuro Próximo means an intention to do something in the future, the action, normally, has already been planned.

Try it yourself:

Are you going to be sleeping all day? (vosotros)

We are not going to be arguing with you for a long time

Futuro Simple Continuo

Mañana estaremos descansando todo el día – Tomorrow we will be resting all day

El lunes a esta hora ya estaré conduciendo mi moto nueva – On Monday at this time I’ll be driving my new motorbike

The same can be applied to Futuro Simple (yo haré), but here the actions are not planned.

Try it yourself:

Pedro will be dancing all night

What will you be doing tomorrow at 11?

Pretérito Perfecto Continuo

He estado estudiando toda la mañana – I have been learning all morning

Te ves cansado. ¿Qué has estado haciendo? – You look tired. What have you been doing?

As the simple Pretérito Perfecto (he hecho) shows a result of an action, it’s continuous version (he estado haciendo) is needed to stress out, that the action was quite long. The action hasn’t just happened, but has been happening for some time up to the present moment.

Try it yourself:

I’ve been waiting for one hour

They’ve been working all week

Pluscuamperfecto Continuo

Carlos dijo que había estado preparando la barbacoa toda la mañana – Carlos said, that he had been making a barbecue all morning

Noté que tú habías estado practicando español mucho tiempo – I noticed, that you had been practicing Spanish for a long time

Pluscuamperfecto (yo había hecho) is used, when something had been done before a certain moment in the past. With Pluscuamperfecto Continuo we explicitly indicate, that it was a long process that had been lasting up to that moment.

Try it yourself:

I realized, that Lola had been cheating me all the time

The teacher saw, that the students had been getting ready for the exam all month

If you find these continuous tenses confusing, start with conjugation of the verb estar in simple tenses. When you feel confident enough with estar conjugation, add a needed gerund, that never changes. It’s just estar, that must take personal forms, not gerund.