Reported speech: future to conditional
When reporting speech, a statement originally spoken in the past but referring to a future plan or promise shifts its tense. If the reporting verb is in the past (like dijo or prometió), the original future tense verb shifts to the conditional.
For example, if the municipality originally said "We will pave the street," the reported version becomes "They promised that they would pave the street."
Remember, the conditional is formed by adding the imperfect endings to the full infinitive (-ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -ían).
Reporting questions about the future
Just as with other tenses, if the original question included a question word like dónde (where), you keep that word to connect the clauses when reporting the question. The future action still shifts to the conditional.
"Lo de..." (What happened with...)
When you want to refer to a known situation, event, or issue without describing it fully, you can use the phrase lo de followed by a noun or name. This roughly translates to "the matter of," "the thing about," or "what happened with."
When the noun is masculine and singular, de and the article el combine to form del.