For the Faculty of Humanities of Bordeaux, the last two decades of the 19th century were a period of intense development. The number of subjects taught at the faculty grew each year, and the university chose to turn to Hispanic Studies so as to transform Bordeaux into a national – or even international – reference in the field. This university policy didn’t seem to foster any internal tensions. However, between 1898 and 1899, a crisis came to shatter this apparent unity – the ‘Stapfer incident’, which was directly linked with the Dreyfus Affair and deeply divided the teaching community. Its consequences were important and could be analyzed at various levels – whether national, local or individual. Eventually, this crisis allowed the group of young professors of Hispanic Studies to seize control of the Faculty of Humanities’ deanship.