Breakdown of Habríamos prevenido la explosión si no hubiera habido negligencia.
no
no, not
haber
to be (there is / there are)
si
if
prevenir
to prevent
la negligencia
the negligence
la explosión
the explosion
Questions & Answers about Habríamos prevenido la explosión si no hubiera habido negligencia.
Why does the sentence use hubiera habido? It looks like the same verb twice.
You are exactly right—they are both forms of the verb haber. In this past unreal conditional structure, the first part (hubiera) is the auxiliary or "helping" verb in the imperfect subjunctive, meaning "had." The second part (habido) is the past participle of haber acting as the main verb, meaning "been" (as in the existential "there had been"). Together, no hubiera habido translates perfectly to "there hadn't been."
The lesson formula says "Si + past perfect subjunctive + conditional perfect", but this sentence starts with the conditional perfect. Is that allowed?
Yes! Just like in English, you can flip the order of the clauses without changing the meaning. You can say "If there hadn't been negligence, we would have prevented the explosion" (Si no hubiera habido negligencia, habríamos prevenido...) or swap them like in this sentence. Notice that when the si clause comes second, you don't use a comma between the clauses.
Is prevenido a regular past participle, or does it do something irregular because it contains the verb venir?
It is entirely regular here! While prevenir does conjugate exactly like the highly irregular verb venir in most tenses, its past participle is completely normal. Just drop the -ir and add -ido to get prevenido. (Note that venir also has a regular past participle: venido).
Could I say si no hubiese habido instead of si no hubiera habido?
Grammatically, yes. Both the -ra and -se endings for the imperfect subjunctive are correct and mean the exact same thing. However, in Latin America, the -ra form (hubiera) is far more common in everyday spoken Spanish. You will generally only see the -se form (hubiese) in formal writing, legal documents, or literature in this region.
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