Spanish has had a copula for all of its history, i.e. since the period of Archaic Latin starting from 600 BC. Its conjugation comprises the categories of an intransitive verb. It is obligatory in clauses with a nominal predicate ().

The default main constituent order in a verbal clause is ‘subject – verb – other dependents’ ().

The default thematic structure of a copula clause has the comment in the predicate. This also applies to the pseudo-cleft construction. The language has had a regular pseudo-cleft constructions for all of its history. The second line of shows a pseudo-cleft construction which has a identificational contrastive focus on the goal of the movement.

In contemporary spoken Colombian Spanish, the relative proform may be omitted and the mere copula suffices to separate the topic from the comment of a clause ().

In such a construction, the copula follows the topic and precedes the comment, which contains a contrastive focus. To contemporaneous synchronic grammarians, this appears as “ser intrusivo”, approximately ‘intrusive copula’ (Simões 1992, ch. 6.4.2). It is commonplace in Colombian Spanish.