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• Si -future exclamatives in Spanish shed new light into the notion of insubordination. • Mirative future emerges as a result of successive emancipations. • Mirative future is compatible with the 'distance-forward' deictic template. • Mirative future represents a further step into the process of grammaticalization. • Mirative future exemplifies the range of mirative meaning conveyed in Spanish. This paper examines si -future exclamatives in Spanish, both synchronically and diachronically, with the aim not only of identifying their possible contexts of use but also of distinguishing their various semantic interpretations. In addition to permitting the redefinition of the space of insubordination and assessing the role of analogy in the continuing independence of the marker si , this proposal provides an explanation of Spanish mirative future as emerging from the emancipation of a previous structure, albeit that it retains the deictic value of morphological future –which becomes a functional feature in its new discursive meaning. From this perspective, the grammaticalization of morphological future in Spanish is not contemplated as a closed cycle, but rather as a still ongoing process. More broadly speaking, this paper helps outline the semantic array of mirative meanings through providing evidence about the type of mirativity that can be conveyed in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]