Spanish Verb Gastar Conjugation

The Spanish verb gastar is a regular -ar verb that means to spend. The conjugation pattern for gastar is similar to that of other regular -ar verbs like bajar, tratar and llamar. This article includes gastar conjugations in the present, past, conditional, and future indicative mood, the present and past subjunctive mood, the imperative mood, and other verb forms.

Using the Verb Gastar

The most frequent use of the verb gastar is to spend money. For example, El chico gastó mucho dinero en el regalo para su novia (The boy spent a lot of money on the gift for his girlfriend). Gastar can also be used to talk about time, but in that case, it means to waste time. For example, No debes gastar tiempo jugando videojuegos (You should not waste time playing video games). In order to talk about spending time, in Spanish we use the verb pasar tiempo, as in Me gusta pasar tiempo con mi familia (I like to spend time with my family).

The verb gastar can also mean to use or to use up. For example, you can say Se gastó la tinta de la impresora (The printer's ink got used up), or Ese carro gasta mucha gasolina (That car uses a lot of gas). In addition, gastar can mean to wear out, as in Gastaste la suela de tus zapatos de tanto correr (You wore out the soles of your shoes from running so much).

Gastar Present Indicative

Gastar Preterite Indicative

There are two past tenses in Spanish. The preterite tense is used to describe actions completed in the past.

Gastar Imperfect Indicative

The other past tense in Spanish is the imperfect, which is used to talk about ongoing or repeated actions in the past. The imperfect can be translated to English as "was spending" or "used to spend."

Gastar Future Indicative

Gastar Periphrastic Future Indicative 

The periphrastic future is formed with three components: the present indicative conjugation of the verb ir (to go), the preposition a, and the infinitive gastar.

Gastar Present Progressive/Gerund Form

To form the present progressive you need the gerund or present participle (the English -ing form).

Gastar Past Participle

To form perfect tenses like the present perfect, you need the past participle of the verb.

Gastar Conditional Indicative

To talk about possibilities, you can use the conditional tense.

Gastar Present Subjunctive

The present subjunctive is used in sentences with two clauses, when the speaker is expressing a desire, doubt, denial, emotion, negation, possibility, or other subjective situations.

Gastar Imperfect Subjunctive

The imperfect subjunctive can be conjugated in two different ways:

Option 1

Option 2

Gastar Imperative

The imperative mood is used to give commands.There are slightly different versions for positive and negative commands.

Positive Commands

Negative Commands