The article deals with a research of the genre of the Spanish spiritual gloss. The study reveals a role of the popular love lyrics in a genre genesis and creation of its linguistic characteristics, as well as a significance of the author’s personality for giving rise to content and style innovations of the Spanish poetry. The analysis of the texts by the mystical poets St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Jesus demonstrates that the linguistic proximity of the initial strophe (villancico) is not an impedment to creation of texts with different ideological content and style. This peculiarity is conditioned by explicity of the gloss in contrast to a high degree of implicity of the villancico.