Extraposición: 'es difícil que venga'

Es difícil que venga. The grammatical subject of es is a whole que-clause — que venga — but it sits at the end of the sentence rather than at the beginning. The canonical, "logical" word order would be Que venga es difícil, and that order is perfectly grammatical, but speakers overwhelmingly prefer the extraposed version. Spanish is one of the most aggressively extraposing languages in Europe: with ser + adjective + clausal subject, the extraposed pattern is the default, and the non-extraposed pattern is reserved for marked, topicalised, or emphatic contexts.

This page covers the mechanics of clausal-subject extraposition: which predicates trigger it, what mood the extraposed clause takes, the absence of an expletive "it" (Spanish doesn't say eso es difícil que venga), the role of el hecho de que as a nominaliser when you do want a clausal subject in initial position, and the contrast with English's it is X that… construction. Getting these patterns right is one of the cleanest ways to make B2 Spanish prose sound less translated and more native.

What extraposition is

A clausal subject is a que-clause (or sometimes a si-clause or an infinitive phrase) that fills the subject slot of the main verb. Que venga is the subject of es difícil: what is difficult? — que venga.

Three word orders are possible in principle:

1. Canonical (subject first): Que venga es difícil.
2. Extraposed (clausal subject moved to the end): Es difícil que venga.
3. Pleonastic (English-style "it"): ❌Eso es difícil que venga. (Not grammatical in Spanish.)

Spanish overwhelmingly chooses option 2 — extraposition — and does not insert any pleonastic subject in the original slot. The verb just stands alone, in its 3rd-person singular form, until the que-clause arrives at the end.

In each, the extraposed que-clause is the real subject; es agrees with it in the unmarked 3rd-singular form; nothing fills the original subject slot.

Why Spanish prefers extraposition

The structural reason is the end-weight principle: long, heavy phrases tend to migrate to the end of the sentence, where they don't interrupt the rhythm before the main predicate is delivered. A que-clause is heavier than an adjective like difícil or importante, so the heavy item goes last.

The pragmatic reason is information packaging: the matrix predicate (es difícil, es importante) is usually the new, salient piece of information that the speaker wants to deliver first, with the clausal content following as the support. Es difícil que venga delivers the evaluation up front; que venga es difícil presupposes that we're already talking about whether he'll come and then evaluates it.

Both effects push Spanish toward extraposition. The canonical order is reserved for explicit topicalisation — when the speaker wants the clausal content to be the topic of the sentence:

Here the que-clauses are topics being contrasted — que venga vs. que llegue puntual — and the canonical order is licensed by the contrast.

Triggers: which predicates take extraposed clausal subjects?

The pattern is licensed by a stable set of matrix predicates. There are three main families:

Evaluative ser + adjective

The largest family: ser + an evaluative or modal adjective.

The mood split is the standard subjunctive/indicative split for impersonal expressions: evaluative or modal predicates take the subjunctive (the content isn't asserted as a fact, it's evaluated or weighed); assertive predicates that affirm the truth of the embedded content take the indicative. Es probable que llueva doesn't claim that it will rain; es cierto que llueve does.

When the assertive predicate is negated, it flips to the subjunctive — because the speaker is no longer asserting the embedded content:

Psychological-effect verbs

A second large family: verbs that describe how a fact affects someone emotionally or cognitively. The grammatical subject is the clausal content; the experiencer is an indirect object.

These verbs work like gustar-type psychological verbs (see pronouns/gustar-type-verbs): the experiencer (me) is the indirect object, and the clausal content is the grammatical subject that gets extraposed. The verb agrees with the clausal subject in 3rd-singular.

The mood is almost always subjunctive with these verbs because they all express an emotional reaction or evaluation rather than an assertion of fact. The single common exception is parecer: me parece que llueve (assertion of impression — indicative) vs. no me parece que llueva (denial of impression — subjunctive).

Other extraposing constructions

A handful of other constructions follow the same pattern:

Convenir, bastar, hacer falta, valer la pena all license the same extraposed-clausal-subject pattern with the same mood logic.

No pleonastic it: the big English contrast

The single most important fact about Spanish clausal-subject extraposition is what is missing from it: there is no pleonastic subject. English requires it:

• It is important that you arrive on time.
• It is likely that it will rain.
• It seems to me that he is right.

Spanish has no equivalent. The verb stands alone:

• Es importante que llegues a tiempo.
• Es probable que llueva.
• Me parece que tiene razón.

Inserting a pleonastic subject — ❌eso es importante que…, ❌ello es probable que…, ❌aquello me parece que… — is ungrammatical. The verb's morphology and the eventual arrival of the que-clause are enough to license the construction.

This is one of the most persistent errors in English-speaker Spanish. It is also one of the easiest to fix once the pattern is internalised: never start an extraposed-clausal-subject sentence with a dummy pronoun in Spanish.

A separate construction that does use eso is anaphoric:

The difference: eso in eso es lo que me preocupa refers back to a previously-mentioned fact; pleonastic it in it is important that… has no antecedent. Spanish allows the first and bans the second.

When the clausal subject does go first: el hecho de que + subjunctive

When a speaker genuinely wants to put the clausal content in subject-initial position — for topicalisation, contrast, or rhetorical emphasis — Spanish prefers to nominalise the clause with el hecho de que (the fact that). This gives the clause a noun head and makes it a more natural subject.

The el hecho de que clause takes the subjunctive in most contexts — the speaker is presenting the fact as a topic for evaluation rather than asserting it (it's already presupposed by the time it's nominalised). When the matrix is purely assertive, the indicative is also possible:

The choice between subjunctive and indicative after el hecho de que is one of the more debated mood-selection points in modern peninsular Spanish; both are heard, and the subjunctive is the safer default for evaluative or emotional matrices.

Without el hecho de que, the bare clausal subject in initial position (Que venga es difícil) is grammatically possible but stylistically marked — it appears in literary prose, in headlines, and in deliberately contrastive constructions, but rarely in neutral discourse.

Extraposition with infinitives

The same extraposition pattern applies to infinitival subjects. When the experiencer is the same as the implied subject of the action, Spanish uses an infinitive instead of a que-clause.

The contrast: infinitive when the subject of the embedded action is generic or coreferential with the matrix; subjunctive que-clause when there is a specific, different subject.

This is the standard subjunctive-vs.-infinitive distinction with impersonal predicates. See verbs/subjunctive/present/vs-infinitive for the full treatment.

Mood in extraposed clauses: a quick recap

The mood in the extraposed que-clause is determined by the semantic class of the matrix predicate, exactly as in any other substantive clause:

• Evaluative / modal / emotive matrices → subjunctive: es difícil que venga, es importante que llegues, me molesta que no hayas avisado.
• Assertive matrices → indicative: es verdad que viene, está claro que tiene razón.
• Negated assertive matrices → subjunctive (the assertion is denied): no es verdad que venga, no está claro que tenga razón.

The matrix predicate decides the mood; extraposition itself has no effect on mood selection. For the full mood story, see verbs/subjunctive/present/triggers-impersonal and verbs/subjunctive/present/triggers-emotions.

Why this matters for prose quality

Extraposition is everywhere in real Spanish, and getting it right is one of the surest markers of fluency. A piece of B2 Spanish prose that consistently uses extraposed-clausal-subject patterns where natives would use them — and avoids the English-style pleonastic eso es importante que… — reads as genuinely Spanish rather than translated. Conversely, prose that puts every clausal subject in initial position (Que llueva es probable. Que vengas a tiempo es importante.) reads as stiff and translated, even when every individual sentence is grammatical.

The fix is essentially mechanical: default to extraposition; use el hecho de que when you genuinely need the clause in subject position; never insert pleonastic eso or ello.

Common Mistakes

Key takeaways

• Spanish strongly prefers extraposed clausal subjects over canonical subject-initial order: Es difícil que venga over Que venga es difícil.
• No pleonastic subject: Spanish has no equivalent of English it in it is important that…. The verb stands alone in 3rd-singular and the que-clause arrives at the end.
• Triggers: ser + evaluative/modal adjective (es difícil, es importante, es probable), assertive ser + adjective (es verdad, es cierto, está claro), psychological-effect verbs (me molesta, me sorprende, me alegra), and impersonal constructions (conviene, basta, hace falta).
• Mood: evaluative/modal/emotive matrices → subjunctive; assertive matrices → indicative; negation flips assertive matrices to subjunctive.
• When you genuinely need the clausal subject in initial position, nominalise with el hecho de que plus subjunctive.
• With generic or coreferential implied subjects, prefer the infinitive over the que-clause: es importante llegar a tiempo (generic) vs. es importante que llegues a tiempo (specific 'you').
• Extraposition is one of the cleanest fluency markers in Spanish prose — defaulting to it removes a layer of "translated" feel from English-speaker writing.