The present investigation refers to the traditional perception that exists in Brazil about the Spanish language and its learning by Brazilians. In such perception, the uttermost obstacle that any Brazilian must overcome in his process of learning the Spanish language are the denominated "false friends". According to Celada & González (2000), such perception has been introduced in Brazil by Nascentes (1939), in whose work one is able to find most of the common sense and common lore opinions about the learning of the Spanish language by Brazilians. Such perception has ever since dominated most of the Brazilian academic investigation about the teaching and learning of the Spanish language, which theoretic basis can be found in the "strong" version of the Contrastive Analysis. This investigation begins with the analysis of the terms most commonly used by the academic investigation (such as false friends, false cognates, heterosemánticos), in order to demonstrate that such terms do not refer to the same phenomena. In the sequence, the perception that the "false friends" are the greatest villain in the learning of the Spanish language by Brazilians is put in doubt. The final objective of this investigation is to study the process of learning of the Spanish language by Brazilians, and from another theoretic perspective, to analyse the production of meaning that allows to determine the factors (specially history and social representation) which restrict the languages, and influence the production of the meaning in the contact between Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish.