Breakdown of Si el gobierno hubiera ayudado, no habría habido víctimas en la tragedia.
no
no, not
en
in / on / at
haber
to be (there is / there are)
ayudar
to help
si
if
el gobierno
government
la tragedia
the tragedy
la víctima
the victim
Questions & Answers about Si el gobierno hubiera ayudado, no habría habido víctimas en la tragedia.
Why do we use hubiera ayudado in the first half and habría habido in the second half?
This sentence uses the classic unreal past conditional structure. To talk about a hypothetical situation in the past that didn't actually happen, we use si + the past perfect subjunctive (hubiera ayudado) for the condition, and the conditional perfect (habría habido) for the imagined result.
habría habido looks like the same verb twice. How does that work?
You are seeing two forms of the verb haber. The first part, habría, is the auxiliary (helper) verb meaning "would have". The second part, habido, is the past participle of haber used in its impersonal sense of "to exist" or "there to be". Together, they mean "there would have been".
Since víctimas is plural, shouldn't it be habrían habido?
No, though even some native speakers make this mistake! When haber is used to mean "there is" or "there are", it is an impersonal verb and only ever takes the singular form. Because víctimas is the object of the verb rather than the subject, the verb remains singular as habría habido.
Could I say si el gobierno hubiese ayudado instead?
Yes! hubiera and hubiese are both valid forms for the auxiliary verb in the past perfect subjunctive. In Latin America, hubiera is much more common in everyday speech, but you will still read and hear hubiese, and they mean the exact same thing.
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