The end of the Franco regime marked a reorientation of Spanish foreign policy. In addition to Europeanization and NATO membership, improving relations with Latin America was also on the agenda. This shift became manifest at the Ibero-American summits, starting in 1991.

"Overall, it can be said that during colonization, individual and collective rights were violated in such a way that, from today's perspective, constitutes a violation of the laws of both nations." In 2019, on the 500^th anniversary of the conquest of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán (now Mexico City) by a Spanish army, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador demanded an apology from the Spanish royal family in an open letter. Traditionally, the mother country's relations with its former Latin American colonies have been ambivalent. Nonetheless, post-Transición Spain sought rapprochement after the end of Latin American dictatorships in the late 1980s. If Felipe González had already traveled to dictatorial Chile as opposition leader in 1977 and campaigned for the release of socialist lawyer Erich Schnake, as Spanish Prime Minister, together with Mexican President Salinas de Gortari, he initiated the Ibero-American summits held annually from 1991 onward with the heads of state and government of Spain, Portugal and the 19 countries of Latin America attending.

Within this forum, Spain had a model function in terms of democratization and economic development. A counter-image and enemy image cultivated above all in the Spanish news media was Cuban President Fidel Castro. By dint of his authoritarian autocracy of more than 30 years and the economic backwardness of his country, Castro embodied everything that Spain believed to have overcome. At the same time, it was possible to revive old communist enemy images from the Franco era and to reassure Spain of its civilizational advantage. After the Viña del Mar summit in 1996, El País proudly announced that Castro had signed a declaration committing himself to pluralism and democracy, thus making concessions to the democratic mainstream. On the other hand, a horrified reaction ensued when the Cuban caudillo refused to jointly condemn ETA at the Panama Summit in 2000. In this way, the balance of power between Spain and Cuba provided an indication of the degree of democratization in Latin America as well as underlining the role of the Iberian mother country as a schoolmaster.

The extent to which Spain was vulnerable to criticism within this international forum was demonstrated at the 1998 Porto summit, when Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar and the presidents of Argentina and Chile, Carlos Menem and Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, signed a communiqué emphasizing the primacy of national jurisdiction over international law that explicitly condemned the actions of Spanish investigating judge Baltasar Garzón in the arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London. Spain's Western ties in the North Atlantic defense alliance also ran counter to Latin American interests at times. Symptomatic of this was Spain's accession to NATO in 1982, which took place at the very moment when its new ally, Great Britain, was at war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. In particular, the paradigmatic shift from Felipe González's laissez-faire policy to José María Aznar’s loyalty to Washington from 1996 onward led to lasting disagreements. In this respect, the declining participation of Latin American heads of state at Ibero-American summits from the 2000s onward is symptomatic of a deterioration in Ibero-American relations.