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The article discusses key issues related to entrepreneurship which are relevant to the founders, heirs and managers of firms in Spain. In a society such as the Spanish one, in which the task of industrializing the country has not been assumed by the state, the capitalist entrepreneur occupies a preeminent position. Managers are those who take on the direction of the firm as representatives of its owners: a family, a few business partners, a bank, a financial group, or a large number of shareholders. The founders are those who have taken an active part in the creation of the firm, who typically show by their answers a personality profoundly devoted to the firm, which has its negative as well as positive aspects. The group of heirs is possibly the most heterogeneous, since it includes those at the head of firms started by their grand-parents. In industrial Spain, Catalonian firms are the best known, and given the region's industrial tradition, there are more firms founded by the grandfather than in the rest of industrialized Spain. The concept of familialism in the firms in Spain gives a kind of closeness to the company and lends to relations among the personnel, especially managerial personnel, a character very different from that found in contractual and profit-making relationships.