As in other European traditions, it is during the Romantic period when the Spanish imaginary emerges as a major phenomenon in British literary and visual culture, where especially Andalusiaand its Islamic past become objects of intense fascination. Byron contributed to conjuring up visions of ‘renown’d, romantic Spain’ and its oriental past (and present) in works from Childe Harold I to ‘A Very Mournful Ballad’ on the conquest of Alhama, Don Juan and The Age of Bronze. In this respect, he joined many other contemporary authors including Felicia Hemans, Walter Scott, Robert Southey, Charlotte Dacre, Letitia Elizabeth Landon and Walter Savage Landor. This talk views Byron’s ‘Spanish-Moorish’ Orientalism within this broader context in order to explore its specificities. Analyzing passages from Childe Harold I, ‘Alhama’ and Don Juan I, I aim to discuss how what has been called the ‘myth of al-Andalus’ becomes, in Byron’s works, a site of contact and overlap, as well as contraposition and tension. In ways that both reflect and depart from other contemporary writings on Spanish exoticism, Byron’s Spanish Orientalism is another crucial manifestation of his ‘poetics of attrition’, and one that exerted incalculable influence on later authors, not least Spanish ones as they explored and interpreted the historical and cultural peculiarity of their country among other European nations.