ABSTRACT
One of the major consequences of democratization for foreign policy in Spain was a policy shift from bilateralism to multilateralism. That is, foreign relations ceased to be based just on country-to-country contacts and began to flow through the organizations of which Spain became a member after the demise of the Francoist dictatorship. Policy came to be influenced by the alliances assumed under the constitutional monarchy. Democratization brought with it the development of a firm and unambiguous commitment to western Europe and the Atlantic axis of foreign policy. The Atlanticist orientation was only made clear by the mid-1980s, however, after the Socialist party (PSOE) won the 1982 elections: entry into the EC and confirmation of NATO membership followed. Earlier, Suárez’s foreign minister, Marcelino Oreja, could still speak of ‘three axes to foreign policy, the European, the Ibero-american and the Arab’ as if they were equally important (Armero 1989: 45).1 It was only after 1986 that Latin America was explicitly relegated to the status of a ‘special relationship’. Our interest here is to analyse how the transformation of Spain’s external relationsdemocratization, multilateralism and Atlanticism-has worked out within the context of Spain’s ‘special relationship’ with Latin America.
