Acabar de & infinitive is an idiomatic expression that is the equivalent of a present perfect expression in English:
"to have just [verb in past participle form]
The difference is that where English uses a past participle, Spanish uses the infintive of a verb.
For example in English we say:
| I have just eaten an apple. | "eaten" is the past participle |
But in Spanish we use the present tense of Acabar and an infinitive:
| Acabo de comer [infinitive] una manzana | I have just eaten [past participle] an apple |
Let's look at some more examples:
| Acabo de despertarme. | I have just woken up. |
| Acabas de ducharte. | You have just taken a shower. |
| Acabamos de llegar. | We've just arrived. |
Acabar de also has a past tense which corresponds to the Past Perfect tense in English. For example, in English we would say:
| I had just eaten an apple. | "eaten" is the past participle just as before; but this time we have conjugated "to Have" in the past tense; "had" |
In Spanish we use the Imperfect past tense of Acabar:
| (Yo) Acababa de | I had just |
| comer [infinitive] | eaten [past participle] |
| una manzana | an apple |
Let's look at some more examples:
| I had just gotten up. | (Yo) Acababa de levantarme. |
| You had just put on your make-up. | Acababas de maquillarte. |
| We had just arrived. | Acabábamos de llegar. |