this article is mainly focused on three verbal modes in current Spanish: indicative, potential, and subjunctive tenses. The so called potential mode is thus defended versus the modal division established by the Real Academia Espanola (2010), according to the proposal of the conditional tense by Emilio Alarcos Llorach (1994). The traditional notion of the subjunctive tense is discussed as if it were the modus irrealis, because it is also a tense suitable to express a real action. A new model of verbal conjugation is proposed.