Spanish Verb Despertarse Conjugation

The Spanish verb despertar or despertarse means to wake up or to awaken. This article provides the conjugation for the verb despertarse in the present, past and future indicative, the subjunctive, imperative, and other verb forms. The tables show the conjugations of the reflexive form, despertarse, since it is commonly used in conversation.

The verb despertar can be a reflexive verb and a transitive or intransitive verb. It can be used as an intransitive verb or as a reflexive verb to simply mean to wake up or awaken, as in Ana despertó de su siesta (Ana woke up/awoke from her nap) or Carlos se despertó temprano (Carlos woke up early). Also, it can be used as a transitive verb to mean someone wakes someone or something up, as in Ana despierta al niño (Ana wakes the boy up). 

The verb despertar is a stem-changing -ar verb, like almorzar or acostarse. Stem-changing means that when it is conjugated, there is sometimes a change in the vowel in the verb stem. Despertarse has the stem change e to ie, since the second e in the stem of despertarse often changes to ie.

Despertarse Present Indicative

In the present indicative tense, the stem change e to ie occurs for all of the conjugations except nosotros and vosotros. Reflexive verbs use the same verb endings as regular verbs, but you must include the reflexive pronoun directly before the conjugated verb.

Despertarse Preterite Indicative

You do not have to worry about the stem change for this verb in the preterite indicative tense. Simply follow the rules for conjugating -ar verbs in the preterite. 

Despertarse Imperfect Indicative

The imperfect indicative tense can be translated as "was waking up" or "used to wake up", since it is used to describe ongoing or habitual actions in the past. For this tense there are no stem changes.

Despertarse Future Indicative

Despertarse Periphrastic Future Indicative

When conjugating a periphrastic verb tense (meaning a verb tense containing more than one word), the reflexive pronoun must be placed before the conjugated verb, which in this case is the verb ir (to go).

Despertarse Conditional Indicative

Despertarse Present Progressive/Gerund form

The progressive forms are used to describe ongoing actions. The present progressive is formed using the present tense conjugation of the verb estar (to be) followed by the present participle (or gerund) of the verb (in this case formed with the ending -ando).

Present Progressive of Despertarse: se está despertando

She is waking up. -> Ella se está despertando de la siesta.

Despertarse Past Participle

Past participles can be used as adjectives or to form compound verb tenses. To form the past participle of an -ar verb, drop the -ar and add the ending ado. Past participles can also be used as adjectives.

Present Perfect of Despertarse: se ha despertado

She has woken up. -> Ella se ha despertado muy tarde.

Despertarse Present Subjunctive

In the present subjunctive conjugation, you must change the stem e to ie in all the conjugations except nosotros and vosotros, just like in the present indicative tense.

Despertarse Imperfect Subjunctive

There are two different ways of conjugating the imperfect subjunctive. Both forms are equally valid, and neither one includes a stem change.

Option 1

Option 2

Despertarse Imperative 

The imperative mood is used to give direct orders. You can give affirmative commands or negative commands, which have slightly different forms for tú and vosotros. Also, note that when forming the imperative of reflexive verbs, the reflexive pronoun is attached to the end of positive commands, but it is placed separately before the verb in negative commands.

Positive Commands

Negative Commands