This paper aims to infer about the role of public enterprises in the development of the Spanish investment in Latin America over the period 1980-2007. Similarly, the research aims to refute the thesis of authors who have considered the privatization of certain Spanish public companies as a prerequisite for the promotion of this investment process. Thus, the research seeks to challenge this causal relationship and demonstrate that, while there is a coincidence in time between the two phenomena, a long-term analysis suggests that the public company and the political played, between the late eighties and early nineties of the last century, an essential role as initiators and promoters of this strategy internationalized.