I'd like to back off from "Spanish ownership" of the subjunctive for a moment and point out that English does have the subjunctive and that it functions similarly to (though certainly not identically to) the Spanish subjunctive. Let's look at some examples first (source:
http://www.ceafinney.com/subjunctive/examples.html) :
I wish it
were summer.
Subject line, email spam (2004-01-04)
The ultimate goal of the Arabs is that the distinction
be made ...
News, National Public Radio (USA) (2001-01-19)
It's not really vital he
be involved in this call.
Conversation (2001-04-03)
It seemed fated that the project
take its name from the Scripture celebrating renewal.
Ed Marcum, The News-Sentinel (Knoxville, Tennessee) (2001-03-21)
If it
were not for the pleadings of my granddaughter, you would be dead already.
If you
weren't a Doone, I could almost like you.
From the movie, Lorna Doone (2000) (A&E, US television) (2001-03-11)
Most English speakers are not grammarians, yet most speakers who are reasonably educated (or at least well-spoken) would sense that things were amiss if the subjunctive were not used in the above examples.
Imagine hearing the following:
"It seemed fated that the project
takes its name from the Scripture celebrating renewal."
Wow. That would really sound wrong. Very wrong. But why? Though we do use the subjunctive regularly and even detect bad usage instantly, we don't know why the sentence sounds wrong when it is replaced with a verb conjugated in the indicative mood.
I think, in any language, articulating rules (or even good guidelines) for the subjunctive is a tricky business. The human mind is an immensely powerful language processing machine, but we often don't understand how it actually detects flaws and produces grammatically correct phrases with such an astonishing rate of accuracy.
Just some perspective. Though I'd certainly like to hear some discussion of why the subjunctive is being used in the above examples.
