It is known that the publication of Emmanuel Geibel’s and Paul Heyse’s Spanisches Liederbuch in 1852 highly contributed to the dissemination of Spanish poetry in Germany. Its publishers were aware that the poems compiled and translated in this anthology would raise the interest of German composers; indeed, some of these texts gave rise to more than ten musical settings during the following 50 years. Apart from a few famous songs by Schumann, Brahms or Wolf, this corpus has not been discussed yet. As we know, Spanish exoticism was less developed by German composers than by French or Russians during the 19th century. Nevertheless, a deeper investigation through the settings of Geibel’s and Heyse’s translations reveals that the presence of exotic musical features varies significantly according to the content of each text. Considering four poems whose settings attest to this stylistic diversity — from imitations of Spanish dances to more archetypal romantic Lieder —, this paper will question the nature and the functions of musical exoticism in the German Lied.