Learn Portuguese (Portugal): Os documentos que me entregou a conservatória são antigos. - The documents that the registry office handed me are old.

This is an example of subject-verb inversion in a relative clause, which is very common in Portuguese. While English strictly requires the order "that the registry office handed me", Portuguese comfortably allows que me entregou a conservatória (literally "that to me handed the registry office"). This inversion often happens to make the sentence flow better, especially when the subject is a full noun rather than a short pronoun.

Since the word order is mixed up, how do we know a conservatória is the subject doing the action?

When facing an inverted sentence, you have to rely on verb conjugation and context. The verb entregou is in the third-person singular, which matches the singular noun a conservatória. If os documentos were the subject of that specific clause, the verb would have to be the plural entregaram. Plus, logically, a registry office hands over documents, not the other way around!

Why is the pronoun placed before the verb as que me entregou rather than after it as que entregou-me?

The relative pronoun que acts as a "magnet" word. In Portuguese, certain words force object pronouns like me to move before the verb. Because que is one of these strong magnets, it must be que me entregou. The fact that the subject (a conservatória) is inverted and pushed to the end of the clause doesn't change this pronoun rule.