This paper deals with the analysis of subordinate clauses in Eduardo Benot's grammar. Benot is one of the most interesting authors in the Spanish grammar tradition in the end of the nineteenth century, but his approach to complex sentences is rather different from the usual analysis carried out by most traditional grammarians. The object of this paper is to show that Benot's treatment of subordinate clauses is related to his functional point of view about grammar, and as a result, Benot is far from considering complex sentences as "composed" by the simple union of separate sentences.