llegar

Llegar is the verb you'll use every time someone arrives anywhere — and that turns out to be very often. It's a textbook regular -ar verb in every tense except those that require -gu- spelling before e to preserve the hard /g/ sound (llegué, lleguemos). The morphology is therefore trivial, but the verb shows up in dozens of high-frequency expressions where it shifts away from physical arrival: llegar a ser (to become), llegar a tiempo (to be on time), no llegar a fin de mes (to not make ends meet), llegar a un acuerdo (to reach an agreement). The single most-uttered combination, day in and day out, is llegar tarde — to be late, expressed in Spanish with arrive rather than the verb be.

This page lays out the full paradigm with the spelling-change forms highlighted, then walks through the meaning extensions and the llegar a + infinitive construction that gives the verb much of its conversational range.

Non-finite forms

All non-finite forms are regular. The participle llegado is what you'll combine with haber across every compound tense.

Indicative — simple tenses

Presente

Fully regular. No spelling change needed — g stays as g before o and a, which is where every present-indicative ending puts it.

Pretérito perfecto simple

The yo form is the famous spelling change: llegué, not llegé. Without the u, the letter g before é would be pronounced /x/ (like the j in jamón) — which would change llegué into something that sounds like yexé. The silent u is purely orthographic. Every -gar verb shows this same change in the yo preterite: pagar → pagué, jugar → jugué, apagar → apagué.

Pretérito imperfecto

Fully regular. No spelling change needed — endings start with a. Used for habitual past arrivals: llegaba a las ocho cada día (he used to arrive at eight every day).

Futuro simple

Fully regular — endings attach to the full infinitive llegar-, so the g sits before an a and needs no spelling change.

Condicional

Indicative — compound tenses

Pretérito perfecto compuesto

In peninsular Spanish, this is the default for arrivals that happened today, this week, or whose consequences are still in play. He llegado ahora mismo (I just got here) is far more common in Spain than the simple preterite llegué ahora mismo.

Pretérito pluscuamperfecto

Futuro compuesto

Condicional compuesto

Subjunctive — simple tenses

Presente de subjuntivo

Every present subjunctive form takes -gu- because every ending begins with e. Lleguéis keeps the standard accent on the é. Same spelling logic as the yo preterite, applied across the whole paradigm.

Imperfecto de subjuntivo (-ra / -se)

Both -ra and -se forms are valid; -ra dominates in Spain. No spelling change here because the endings start with a (and gar + a keeps the hard /g/ naturally).

Subjunctive — compound tenses

Pretérito perfecto de subjuntivo

Pluscuamperfecto de subjuntivo

Imperative

Note the spelling: affirmative tú llega and vosotros llegad keep plain g (the endings start with a), but every other form — pulled from the subjunctive — requires -gu-. The peninsular vosotros affirmative llegad sometimes drops the -d in very casual speech (llegar pronto), but llegad is the standard prescriptive form and the one you'll see in writing.

Llegar tarde and the arrive logic of Spanish time-keeping

Where English uses to be with time-related adjectives (to be late, to be early, to be on time), Spanish uses llegar — the verb of arrival — paired with adverbs.

This is the Spanish way to talk about whether someone is on time for an event. Estoy tarde is not the way to say I'm late; that would mean something like I am in a late state, which is meaningless. The correct phrase is llego tarde (I'm arriving late) or voy a llegar tarde (I'm going to be late).

The llegar a + infinitive construction

A separate use worth memorizing: llegar a + infinitive expresses managing to do or eventually coming to do something, often with a sense of surprise or culmination.

A close cousin, llegar a ser, means to become — specifically, to become something through a process or trajectory: llegó a ser presidente (he became / went on to become president).

High-frequency expressions with llegar

Llegar a fin de mes is a phrase you'll hear constantly in Spain whenever people talk about household finances and the cost of living. The idiom llegar y besar el santo, peninsular and somewhat dated but still very much understood, refers to the religious practice of pilgrims kissing a saint's statue upon arrival — meaning to achieve something instantly, the moment you start.

The classic English-speaker error

The most common English-speaker error is rendering I'm late literally as estoy tarde or soy tarde — neither of which is grammatical Spanish for that meaning. The correct phrasing is llego tarde (I'm arriving late). The logic is different: English treats lateness as a state of the person; Spanish treats it as a property of the arrival.

A second classic error is using llegar a before a city or country and forgetting that the preposition is a, not en. Llegué a Madrid el lunes (I arrived in Madrid on Monday). Many learners say llegué en Madrid by analogy with English I arrived in Madrid — but llegar in Spanish takes a for destination, just as ir does. Llegué en Madrid would mean something closer to I arrived inside Madrid — and even in that reading, native speakers don't use it.

A third trap is the spelling change: writing llegé instead of llegué in the preterite, or llege instead of llegue in the subjunctive. The forms with plain g before e don't exist for this verb — they would be pronounced with /x/ and would constitute a different (non-)word.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Llegar is regular in every tense except those where a written u must be inserted to keep the hard /g/ sound before e.
• The spelling-change forms are: yo preterite (llegué), the entire present subjunctive (llegue, llegues, llegue, lleguemos, lleguéis, lleguen), and all imperatives drawn from the subjunctive (negative tú, all usted/ustedes, nosotros).
• Spanish expresses being late/early/on time with llegar tarde / temprano / a tiempo, not with ser or estar.
• The preposition after llegar meaning to arrive at/in is always a — never en.
• Llegar a + infinitive means to manage to / eventually come to do something; llegar a ser means to become (through a trajectory).
• Llegar a fin de mes — to make ends meet — is one of the most-uttered phrases about Spanish household economics.