The perception of a foreign country is largely influenced by the existence and reception of literary stereotypes in a given culture. This was certainly true of the image of Spain entertained by 18th century German-speaking authors, whose depictions of Spain underwent an extreme transformation. The present study looks at the origins, dissemination and function of pre-Romantic images of Spain in German-speaking literature, concentrating in its analyses on non-fictional genres such as travel literature, dictionary articles and works on Spanish literature, all of which were central in propagating and disseminating both scholarly and popular views of Spain.