This study focuses on the factors that may influence Spanish family owned businesses to decide to export and move towards internationalization, posing their level of debt as a possible determining factor. To do so, a review of publications
on the subject has been carried out, as well as an empirical study using a sample of 1,846 businesses, which include both family and non-family firms. The results seem to show that the debt level of businesses whose propriety and management are handled by a family differs from that of those that do not fit this characteristic, especially where the decision whether or not to export products abroad is concerned
