This thesis analyses clausal gerundive in the European variety of the Spanish language and its equivalents in the Croatian language, with particular focus on possible equivalences between participial clauses in the two languages. Clausal gerundives are clauses that are subordinate to another clause, which means that they are modifiers to nouns, verbs or clauses. Descriptions of gerundives in this thesis employ descriptive elements of both traditional and contemporary linguistic approaches. The aim of the research is to investigate the grammaticality of equivalent Croatian clauses containing participial constructions and determine the closest Croatian equivalents to Spanish gerundives in terms of distribution and meaning. The initial hypothesis suggests that the distributional and semantic equivalent of Spanish gerundive is the Croatian present participle. Spanish gerundive and Croatian present participle are verbal forms that combine the characteristics of verbs and adverbs. Their relation to verbs is evident in their word formation motivation and transitivity, whereas they exhibit the functional properties of adverbs in that they describe the manner in which the subject performs the activity of the verb, as well as the circumstances of the activity or state expressed by the main verb of the sentence. The thesis consists of seven chapters. The introductory chapter presents the research aim and hypotheses, as well as the methodology and research plan. Chapter two gives an account of fixed-form verbal forms in Spanish (gerundive, infinitive, participle). Chapter three gives an outline of the Spanish gerundive, discussing its syntactic and semantic properties, determining the subject of the gerundive and classifying it according to its syntactic functions as predicative, adverbial or adjectival gerundive. It needs to be stated that in this thesis the syntactic position of the gerundive is classified according to its subject. Chapter four presents the present participle in Croatian, outlining its syntactic and semantic functions, its subjects and its possible role as complement within a predicate. The research part of the thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter five describes the research methodology, while chapter six compares Spanish sentences containing the gerundive to Croatian sentences containing present participle forms, followed by an analysis of translation equivalents of sentences containing gerundives taken from a corpus of translated texts (Spanish – Croatian). The last, seventh chapter, exhibits the research results and discusses them in light of the research aim and hypothesis. The hypothesis that Croatian present participle is equivalent to Spanish gerundive has been partially proved. Although functionally similar categories, Croatian present participle and Spanish gerundive are equivalent in structures where the subject of the gerundive is identical to the subject of the matrix clause verb, whereas, unlike the Spanish gerundive, Croatian present participle cannot refer to the direct object or other syntactic functions of the matrix clause verb. It also needs to be pointed out that, notwithstanding the fact that in many positions in the corpus of translated texts the present participle would be considered grammatical, other equivalent forms appear in its place in Croatian, such as relative clauses, clauses functioning as complements, object clauses, adverbial clauses, etc., which indicates that, apart from the functional similarities between the Spanish gerundive and the Croatian present participle, there are also significant stylistic differences.