This opus is the second of Robert Schumann's two song cycles based on Spanish folksongs, and, like the first (Spanisches Liederspiel, Opus 74), it was drawn from a collection of German translations by Emanuel Geibel. Also like the first cycle, it combines songs for solo voices with duets and quartets. However, instead of solo piano this set is scored for piano duet—a device Johannes Brahms, a friend and great admirer of Schumanns, would later emulate in his sets of Liebeslieder Waltzes. The role of the piano is further expanded through the inclusion of two purely instrumental movements (No. 1, "Vorspiel," and No. 6, "Intermezzo")—an interesting corollary to the integral and often extended piano postludes in the composer's most significant song cycles, Frauenliebe und -leben and Dichterliebe. Whereas in those cycles the passages for piano illuminate the poetic atmosphere of the texts, here the solo movements establish the overtly Spanish flavor of the cycle. This is especially true of the "Vorspeil" which features a prominent bolero rhythm. Certain passages within the cycle itself suggest the strumming of a guitar.

Composed in 1849, Op. 138 seems an obvious model for the later and better-known Spanish cycles of Hugo Wolf. Although the Wolf settings are in the more traditional solo voice and piano format, they share a quasi-dramatic conception made especially clear in the Schumann through the use of multiple singers; texts that are not explicitly connected assume a dramatic linearity as subsequent "characters" appear with their earlier counterparts. Wolf also used a number of the same texts when compiling his cycles.

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