This article reexamines the puzzling issue of where subjects, lexical and null,are located in Spanish and offers a novel explanation for the incompatibility ofpreverbal lexical subjects with fronted focussed constituents. Both SpecIP andthe left periphery appear to be potential landing sites for subjects, accordingto discourse-pragmatic factors. Assuming that pro is a clitic,it is argued that the aforementioned incompatibility can be captured by a simplerule: SpecIP must be empty for focus fronting to occur. This is the case withpro, which adjoins to Infl, or with postverbal subjectssince they remain in SpecVP. From this analysis it follows that: 1) the subjectfield in Spanish is less articulated than is generally assumed, 2) thedifferences between Spanish and other null subject languages with respect to theavailability of preverbal subjets can be reduced to this rule and a differentordering of focus and topic phrases, and 3) it is unnecessary to posit twodifferent topic positions.
