The subjunctive in adjective clauses
Can someone explain to me how to do this practice example so I understand it for my homework.
Completa estas oraciones describiendo cómo sería tu viaje ideal. Usa el subjuntivo: 1.Busco una agencia de viajes que... 2.Necesito un boleto de avión que... 3.Los turistas que... necesitan ponerse una vacuna. 4.Es importante que alguien... 5.No quiero que nadie... 6.Los viajeros que... deben reservar por teléfono.
1 Answer
Ok let's take the first one - busco una agencia de viajes que ...
I'm looking for a travel agency that ....
and let's add
.... can arrange cheap flights to Bail.
The first part can be declared using the indicative mood of buscar (busco) because you are delcaring that you are doing something, all good.
For the second part of the sentence however you can't say 'can' using poder in the indicative mood (puede) to say (declare) that this agency, whoever it may be, can arrange cheap flights because at the moment you're not sure if such a place even exists, you just hope so and you're looking for it. So in these types of cases you'll use 'pueda' which is the present tense of poder in the subjunctive mood.
The same is true when you 'need' something that you're not sure exists yet etc.
The indicative is only used to declare things and in most sentences you just want to declare one thing and the rest of the information is secondary or known and doesn't need to be declared or re-declared.
Eg. when you say 'es bueno que' your opinion that something is good is the important part, it is declared using estar in the indicative mood (es) but the rest of the information is either known or not the most important thing so you just present it in the subjunctive mood.
This is a very hard concept for us learners but hopefully that gives you a little bit of an idea of how it all works.
