Existential Sentences with Haver and Existir | Portuguese (Portugal) Grammar

The introduction page covers the everyday mechanics of há and existir: invariable há, agreeing existir, and why you should avoid existential tem in European Portuguese. This page picks up where that left off. Once a learner is comfortable with the basics, the really interesting territory is what haver does beyond plain existence — haver de for expectation and resolve, haver que for impersonal obligation, the split between houve and havia for past existence, and haver as a literary compound auxiliary that opens up the older strata of Portuguese prose. Everything on this page is the kind of structure a B1/B2 learner starts noticing in newspapers, novels, and political speech, and wonders why it was never taught directly.

Haver de — expectation, resolve, and quiet promise

Haver de + infinitive is one of the most distinctive constructions of European Portuguese. At first glance it looks like a future tense synonym — and in some contexts it can be translated that way — but the real meaning is richer. Haver de expresses a personal commitment or firm expectation: not just "it will happen" but "I am determined that it will happen, trust me". Speakers use it constantly, and it carries warmth, conviction, and sometimes a tinge of consolation or reassurance.

Hei de te ligar amanhã, prometo.

I'll call you tomorrow, I promise. (with quiet determination)

Um dia hás de perceber porque é que fiz isto.

One day you'll understand why I did this.

Havemos de nos encontrar, mais cedo ou mais tarde.

We're bound to meet again, sooner or later.

Compare these to the neutral synthetic future (ligar-te-ei, perceberás, encontrar-nos-emos) or the periphrastic future (vou ligar-te, vais perceber, vamos encontrar-nos). Those forms state a fact about future time. Haver de does something extra: it colours the future with the speaker's attitude. Hei de te ligar is not "I will call you" — it is "I will call you, and I will see to it that this happens".

The paradigm

The construction is haver (conjugated) + de + infinitive. Under the 1990 Orthographic Agreement, the hyphen is removed: write hei de, hás de, há de, havemos de, heis de, hão de. Older texts and writers who have not adopted AO90 will still use hei-de, hás-de, há-de, havemos-de, heis-de, hão-de; you will meet the hyphenated forms constantly in books published before 2009 and in newspapers that still follow the old rules. Recognise both — but if you are writing under AO90, drop the hyphen.

Person	AO90 (current)	Pre-AO90 (historical)	Example
eu	hei de	hei-de	Hei de vencer.
tu	hás de	hás-de	Hás de ver.
ele/ela/você	há de	há-de	Ela há de voltar.
nós	havemos de	havemos-de	Havemos de conseguir.
vós	heis de	heis-de	Heis de compreender. (archaic/regional)
eles/elas/vocês	hão de	hão-de	Hão de chegar em breve.

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Under AO90, the locution haver + de + infinitive is written without a hyphen: hei de, há de, hão de. The pre-AO90 hyphenated forms are still widely visible in pre-2009 books, in Portuguese newspapers that never adopted the agreement, and in the writings of authors who publicly rejected it (notably Vasco Graça Moura). Recognise them — do not reproduce them in new writing under AO90.

Three shades of meaning

Haver de is not a single-purpose construction. It slides between three related flavours depending on context:

1. Personal resolve — "I'm going to see to it that..."

Hei de dizer-lhe tudo, quando o vir.

I'm going to tell him everything when I see him. (firm intent)

Um dia hei de voltar a Lisboa.

One day I will return to Lisbon. (a resolution, almost a vow)

2. Gentle prediction or reassurance — "it will happen, you'll see"

Não chores, filha, tudo há de se compor.

Don't cry, dear, everything will work out. (comforting)

Hás de gostar, verás.

You'll like it, you'll see. (warm persuasion)

3. Wish or invocation — almost a blessing or a curse

Havemos de nos encontrar no outro mundo, irmão.

We shall meet in the next world, brother. (solemn, almost liturgical)

Hás de pagar por isto.

You'll pay for this. (a threat with the weight of a promise)

The Portuguese national anthem, A Portuguesa, ends with contra os canhões marchar, marchar!, but the construction hão de appears across the patriotic and poetic tradition precisely because it carries this sense of sworn, inevitable action. It is a verb form with memory.

Haver de in speech

Despite its solemn cousins in poetry, haver de is enormously common in ordinary PT-PT conversation. The key contexts are promises, threats (playful or serious), expressions of hope, and comforting someone who is worried.

Hei de te mostrar as fotos quando fores lá a casa.

I'll show you the photos when you come over.

Isso há de passar, filho, tem calma.

That'll pass, son, take it easy.

Havemos de ir à praia no domingo, se o tempo ajudar.

We'll get to the beach on Sunday if the weather holds up.

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A useful test: if you can add verás (you'll see) or vais ver at the end without changing the meaning, the speaker is almost certainly using haver de, not the neutral future. The construction carries assurance baked in — it is the verb form of "trust me on this".

Haver que — impersonal obligation

A second advanced haver construction is haver que + infinitive, meaning one must or it is necessary to. It is impersonal: no subject, no agreement, always singular. The register is formal to literary — you meet it in essays, editorials, and philosophical prose, rarely in spoken PT-PT.

Há que reconhecer os nossos erros antes de avançar.

One must acknowledge our mistakes before moving forward. (formal)

Há que distinguir entre o essencial e o acessório.

A distinction must be drawn between the essential and the incidental.

Houve que tomar decisões difíceis naqueles anos.

Difficult decisions had to be made in those years.

The everyday equivalents in speech are é preciso + infinitive, tem de se + infinitive, or tem que se + infinitive:

Register	Construction	Example
(formal/literary)	há que + infinitivo	Há que pensar no futuro.
(neutral)	é preciso + infinitivo	É preciso pensar no futuro.
(informal) spoken	tem de se + infinitivo	Tem de se pensar no futuro.
(informal) spoken	temos de + infinitivo	Temos de pensar no futuro.

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In an essay, há que gives your prose a distinctly Portuguese literary ring — writers like Eduardo Lourenço and Vitorino Magalhães Godinho reach for it constantly. In a conversation at a café, it would sound pompous. Match the register to the situation.

Existir — agreement is obligatory

Existir is a regular -ir verb. Unlike impersonal haver, it agrees with its subject in person and number. This is the most common existir mistake among learners, because English speakers transfer the invariance of há onto existir and end up saying existe muitas razões instead of existem muitas razões.

Existe uma solução para cada problema.

There is a solution for every problem.

Existem várias teorias sobre a origem da linguagem.

There are several theories about the origin of language.

Não existem atalhos para o sucesso.

There are no shortcuts to success.

Because existir agrees, it naturally takes a plural verb with plural nouns in every tense:

Tense	Singular	Plural
Present	existe	existem
Imperfect	existia	existiam
Preterite	existiu	existiram
Future	existirá	existirão
Present subjunctive	exista	existam
Imperfect subjunctive	existisse	existissem

Talvez existam outras formas de vida no universo.

Perhaps there are other forms of life in the universe.

Antes da Revolução, não existiam muitas liberdades.

Before the Revolution, there were not many freedoms.

Há versus existir — register, not meaning

In most contexts, há and existir are interchangeable at the level of truth conditions. The difference is register and tone. Há is grounded, concrete, everyday — it points at things in the world. Existir is abstract, reflective, philosophical — it affirms that something is, without pointing anywhere in particular.

Há pão na cozinha.

There's bread in the kitchen. (concrete, everyday)

Existe pão espiritual além do pão material.

There is spiritual bread beyond material bread. (abstract, reflective)

A useful rule of thumb: if you could point to the thing, use há. If the thing is a concept, a right, a possibility, a principle, use existir.

Houve versus havia — events versus states

When you move past the present and need to describe existence in the past, Portuguese forces you to choose between the preterite (houve) and the imperfect (havia). The choice is not stylistic — it encodes a real distinction between bounded events and ongoing states.

Houve — something happened, had clear boundaries in the past:

Houve um acidente na A1 esta manhã.

There was an accident on the A1 this morning. (a specific event)

Houve uma greve na semana passada.

There was a strike last week. (bounded, concluded)

Houve um silêncio de dois segundos e depois todos aplaudiram.

There was a two-second silence, and then everyone applauded.

Havia — something existed continuously as a backdrop:

Havia muita gente na praça nessa tarde.

There were lots of people in the square that afternoon. (atmospheric, continuous)

Antigamente, havia uma padaria nesta rua.

There used to be a bakery on this street. (ongoing past state)

Havia pouca luz e um cheiro estranho.

There was little light and a strange smell. (scene-setting)

The rule is the same as for other preterite/imperfect pairs: houve punctures time with a specific occurrence; havia stretches across time as a continuous condition. A classic literary opening — Havia um silêncio profundo na sala — sets the scene; a news report — Houve um atentado em Lisboa — reports an event.

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When narrating in the past, use havia for backdrop and houve for what happened against that backdrop. In a single paragraph you will often shift between them: Havia nevoeiro e pouco vento. De repente, houve um estrondo. (There was fog and little wind. Suddenly, there was a crash.)

The há...que + clause frame

A construction that goes beyond the basic há três anos = three years ago pattern: há + time + que + clause. This frames a duration that is still continuing, with an explicit clause stating what has been (or not been) happening throughout.

Há três anos que não o vejo.

I haven't seen him in three years. (and still not)

Há semanas que não chove.

It hasn't rained in weeks.

Há muito tempo que andava para te dizer isto.

I've been meaning to tell you this for a long time.

The equivalent shift in the past — when the reference point is a moment in the past, not now — replaces há with havia:

Havia três anos que não o via quando o encontrei no Porto.

I hadn't seen him in three years when I ran into him in Porto.

Havia semanas que não chovia e a terra estava rachada.

It hadn't rained in weeks and the earth was cracked.

This havia...que shift is the pluperfect equivalent of the há...que present frame. It pins a duration of non-occurrence to a past reference point.

Haver as a literary compound auxiliary

In contemporary European Portuguese, the compound tenses are built with ter: tinha visto, tenho feito, terei chegado. But Portuguese also preserves a parallel system in which haver acts as the compound auxiliary, especially in literary, journalistic, legal, and biblical registers. When you read 19th- or 20th-century prose, you will encounter havia visto, havia feito, haverá chegado, haja partido — the same meanings, but with haver substituted for ter.

Havia-se tornado, ao longo dos anos, um homem diferente.

He had become, over the years, a different man. (literary pluperfect)

O escritor havia publicado três romances antes dos trinta anos.

The writer had published three novels before the age of thirty.

Embora houvesse partido cedo, chegou tarde.

Although he had left early, he arrived late. (literary pluperfect subjunctive)

The auxiliary haver in these compound tenses carries a tone that is measured, distant, and slightly elevated. In speech almost nobody says havia visto; in a Sophia de Mello Breyner short story or a Saramago novel it is standard. This is purely a register alternation — havia visto and tinha visto mean the same thing.

Mesoclisis with compound haver

One of the places where you still meet mesoclisis productively is in compound forms of haver in the conditional and future, especially with a reflexive se. The clitic sits between the auxiliary stem and its ending:

Construir-se-ia um novo hospital se houvesse verba.

A new hospital would be built if there were funds. (passive se + conditional mesoclisis)

Haver-se-ia de reconhecer, mais tarde, que a decisão fora um erro.

It would later have to be recognised that the decision had been a mistake. (literary)

Haver-se-á de ver quem tinha razão.

It will in due course be seen who was right. (formal, almost biblical)

In these forms, haver-se-ia is conditional haveria with se inserted between the stem and the ending; haver-se-á is future haverá with the same split. The placement is obligatory when no proclisis trigger is present. For the full mechanics, see Mesoclise.

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Mesoclisis of compound haver (haver-se-ia, haver-se-á) is rare even in literary writing, but it is the textbook example of why mesoclisis exists. The Romance future and conditional descend from a Latin periphrasis — the infinitive followed by conjugated forms of habere (cantare habeo → cantarei) — and the pronoun is literally trapped in the seam where those two words fused into one.

PT-PT vs. Brazilian Portuguese — a quick contrast

The divergence between European and Brazilian usage is substantial here.

Meaning	PT-PT (preferred)	BR (preferred)
there is / there are (general)	há	tem (colloquial), há (formal)
there was (event)	houve	teve, houve
there were (ongoing)	havia	tinha, havia
"one day I'll..."	um dia hei de...	um dia eu vou...
"one must..." (formal)	há que...	é preciso, deve-se
compound pluperfect (literary)	havia visto / tinha visto	tinha visto (almost exclusively)

A Brazilian will say tem um problema where a Portuguese speaker says há um problema; a Brazilian will rarely say hei de te ligar where a Portuguese speaker uses the construction constantly. These are dialect markers — neither is wrong, but they locate the speaker geographically within seconds.

Summary table — the full system

Structure	Meaning	Register	Example
há + noun	there is / there are	everyday	Há pão.
existe/existem + noun	there is / there are (abstract)	formal/reflective	Existem razões.
há + time	ago / for	everyday	Há três dias.
há + time + que	for X time (and counting)	everyday	Há anos que não o vejo.
havia + time + que	for X time up to that past moment	neutral/literary	Havia anos que não o via.
haver de + infinitivo	expectation, resolve, promise	everyday to literary	Hei de te ligar.
há que + infinitivo	impersonal obligation	formal/literary	Há que reconhecer os erros.
houve + event	there was X (bounded event)	everyday	Houve um acidente.
havia + state	there was X (ongoing)	everyday	Havia silêncio.
haver + participle	literary compound tenses	literary/formal	Havia visto.

Common Mistakes

❌ Hei-de te ligar. (writing under AO90)

Incorrect under AO90 — the hyphen in hei-de was removed in 1990.

✅ Hei de te ligar.

I'll call you. (AO90 spelling)

❌ Existe muitas razões para isto.

Incorrect — existir agrees with its subject; razões is plural.

✅ Existem muitas razões para isto.

There are many reasons for this.

❌ Houve muita gente na festa. (as backdrop)

Awkward — houve marks an event; continuous state of 'being there' needs havia.

✅ Havia muita gente na festa.

There were lots of people at the party. (atmospheric)

❌ Há que ir embora, está a ficar tarde. (at home with family)

✅ Temos de ir embora, está a ficar tarde.

We have to go, it's getting late.

❌ Haveria-se de reconhecer o erro.

Malformed — the clitic in the conditional with no trigger must take mesoclisis.

✅ Haver-se-ia de reconhecer o erro.

It would have to be recognised that there was an error.

Key Takeaways

Haver de
- infinitive is not a neutral future — it expresses resolve, reassurance, or solemn expectation. Write hei de, há de, hão de without a hyphen under AO90.
Há que
- infinitive is a formal-to-literary impersonal obligation construction. In speech, use temos de or é preciso.
Existir agrees in number with its subject; há does not. The two verbs divide labour by register: há for the concrete, existir for the abstract.
Houve marks a bounded past event; havia marks a continuous past state. The distinction is mandatory, not stylistic.
The há...que and havia...que frames anchor ongoing durations to now and to a past moment, respectively.
Haver as a literary compound auxiliary (havia visto, haja partido) substitutes for ter in novels, essays, and legal prose. It means the same thing — only the register changes.
Mesoclisis of haver-se de in the conditional and future is haver-se-ia de, haver-se-á de — a textbook case of the pronoun trapped in the seam of a fused Latin verb.