Acabar de in Spanish: how to say you just did something

To say you just did something in Spanish, use acabar de + infinitive. It literally means “to have just (done something)”, and the second verb always stays in the infinitive: Acabo de comer = “I just ate / I have just eaten”.

In the present, acabar de points to a moment ago — Acabo de llegar (I just arrived). In the imperfect, acababa de means “had just” — something that happened right before another past moment. You only ever conjugate acabar; the verb after de never changes.

Acabar de + infinitive: “to have just”

The pattern is fixed: a conjugated form of acabar, then de, then the infinitive of the action. The infinitive never changes for person or tense — all the work is done by acabar.

Acabo de llegar.
I just arrived.

Acaba de salir.
He just left.

Notice that llegar and salir stay as infinitives. You never conjugate the second verb here, no matter who did the action or when.

Conjugating acabar

Only the first verb changes. Acabar is a regular -ar verb, so in the present it goes acabo, acabas, acaba, acabamos, acabáis, acaban. Pick the right person and leave de + infinitive untouched.

Acabo de comer.
I just ate.

Acabas de comer.
You just ate.

Acabamos de comer.
We just ate.

The shape acaba de / acabamos de + infinitive is all you need; the action verb (comer) rides along unchanged.

The imperfect: “had just”

To say someone had just done something — one past action right before another — put acabar in the imperfect: acababa, acababas, acababa, acabábamos, acababais, acababan. The infinitive still does not move.

Acababa de dormirme cuando llamaste.
I had just fallen asleep when you called.

Acababa de llegar cuando sonó el teléfono.
I had just arrived when the phone rang.

The imperfect acababa de sets up the “just before” past, the same recent-past idea as the present, but anchored to another moment in the story.

Don’t confuse it with plain acabar

Acabar on its own means “to finish”, and acabar con means “to put an end to” or “to run out of”. Only acabar de + infinitive means “to have just”.

Acabé el trabajo.
I finished the work.

Queremos acabar con el ruido.
We want to put an end to the noise.

So Acabé el libro is “I finished the book”, while Acabo de leer el libro is “I just read the book”. Acabar de is the everyday recent-past tool; for counting how long ago or how long something has lasted, Spanish uses a different structure with hace que.

Common mistakes

Conjugating the second verb

The verb after de must be an infinitive, not a conjugated past form.

Acabo de comí. → Acabo de comer.
I just ate.
Acabar carries the tense, so the second verb stays an infinitive.

Dropping the de

Without de, the phrase no longer means “just” — de is not optional.

Acabo comer. → Acabo de comer.
I just ate.
The pattern is always acabar + de + infinitive.

Calquing “just” with justo

English “just” does not translate as justo here; justo means “exactly / fair”, not recent past.

Justo comí. → Acabo de comer.
I just ate.
Use acabar de + infinitive for the recent past, not a literal word for “just”.

Once the pattern clicks, the real skill is dropping acabar de into live sentences about what just happened — answering “Did you eat?” with Acabo de comer without stopping to build it. Fluera gives you short recent-past prompts and reads the answer back, so you can practice Spanish until acabo de comes out automatically.

Practice