Imperfect continuous subjunctive (estivesse a)

The Imperfect Continuous Subjunctive

When you want to express doubt, emotion, or hypothetical conditions about an ongoing action in the past, you need the imperfect continuous subjunctive.

In English, this looks like "were snooping" or "was covering up" in phrases like "I doubted that he was snooping" or "He acted as if he were covering it up."

In European Portuguese, it is formed just like the regular continuous tense, but you conjugate the auxiliary verb estar in the imperfect subjunctive. This is followed by the preposition a and the infinitive of the main verb:

Hypotheticals and "As If"

One of the most common triggers for the imperfect subjunctive is the phrase como se (as if). When describing how someone acted while an action was supposedly in progress, use como se followed by the imperfect continuous subjunctive.

Doubts and Emotions in the Past

Just like in the present tense, expressions of doubt (duvidar que), fear (ter medo de que), and desire (querer que) trigger the subjunctive. When the main verb is in the past tense (like the imperfect duvidava), the ongoing action in the dependent clause must take the imperfect continuous subjunctive.

Past Impersonal Expressions

Past impersonal expressions that show doubt or subjectivity, such as era impossível que (it was impossible that), also require this structure when referring to an action that was happening at that moment.