Había or habían muchos libros?

Let’s start this lesson with a short quiz. Imagine that you want to say the following sentence in Spanish:

“There were many books in that apartment.” You have two options:

a. Había muchos libros en ese apartamento

b. Habían muchos libros en ese apartamento

Which one is the correct form? Había in singular or habían in plural?

Using the verb haber in Spanish

To answer our question, we need to say that había and habían belong to the imperfect tense of the Spanish verb haber. Let’s take a look at that conjugation:

Yo había
Tú habías
Él/Ella había
Nosotros/as habíamos
Vosotros/as habíais
Ellos/as habían

Now, very often, we use the verb haber as the auxiliary verb “to have”:

...todas las cosas que había estado buscando, ¿no?

...all the things that I had been looking for, right?

Caption 5, Belanova - Entrevista
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However, in the sentence we are discussing here, we are not using haber as the auxiliary verb “to have,” but rather as an element that allows us to make a reference to the existence of many books in a particular place (the apartment). In other words, we are using haber as the equivalent of there is / there are in English.

When we use haber with that intention, we ALWAYS have to use its singular form even if what comes after it is a plural noun! Because of that, the correct answer to our opening question is the following:

a. Había muchos libros en ese apartamento

How to use había when talking about existence

Now that we understand that we need to use the singular había and not the plural form habían, let’s look at a couple of examples of how to properly use había when talking about the presence or existence of things or people in a particular place:

Aquí había unas comidas para llevar.

There were some takeout places here.

Caption 8, 75 minutos - Gangas para ricos
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Porque había diferentes explicaciones de…

Because there were different explanations of…

Caption 31, El Aula Azul - Dos historias
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Porque había muchos obstáculos para ese encuentro.

Because there were many obstacles for that meeting.

Caption 34, La Sub30 - Familias
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Y había muchos seres extraños.

And there were many strange beings.

Caption 43, Salvando el planeta Palabra - Llegada
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No había máquinas de estas.

There were no machines like these.

Caption 37, Tortillería La Nueva Única - Entrevista con don Alfonso
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By the way, it is worth saying that many Spanish speakers make the mistake of using habían instead of había in the context we just discussed. In fact, many people think that what comes after the verb haber is the subject of the sentence, which is not the case.

That’s it for now. We hope this lesson will help you to avoid making this very common mistake in Spanish. And don’t forget to send us your feedback and suggestions.