Current developments in educational policy on the national and international level as well as recent outcomes of pedagogical research pose a challenge to foreign language teaching at schools: Against the backdrop of a perceived need to contribute to the development of multilingualism and lifelong language learning, there is a growing interest in linking the single language subjects in a cross-curricular way in terms of their content, methods and aims and in implementing cross-linguistic approaches to language teaching and learning. With the key question „Same same but different?“ we would like to point out the two dimensions of this topic: levelling down the distinguishing elements on the one hand and overemphasising their differences on the other. The object of this paper is to illustrate how the subjects English and Spanish can be interconnected in practice. At first, specific characteristics as well as similarities between the subjects English (as first foreign language) and Spanish (as second foreign language) will be examined, before appropriate areas for cross-curricular work will be introduced.