When Port Aventura opened in 1995 in Salou, The Tussauds Group owned 40.0% of the park, while La Caixa had 33.2%, Anheuser-Busch had 19.9%, and FECSA had 6.7%. In 1998, the majority of Tussauds Group's shares in the park were sold to Universal and the park was rebranded as 'Universal's Port Aventura', which made it the first Universal Studios theme park in Europe.

In 2002, a water park (Costa Caribe) and two hotels (Hotel PortAventura and Hotel El Paso) were constructed, and the resort was further rebranded as 'Universal Mediterranea'. In 2004, NBCUniversal (Universal Studios' parent) sold all interest in PortAventura. It is owned and operated by La Caixa Banking Group's investment vehicle Criteria, but as of 2005, the Universal name has been dropped from the branding, and the resort was once again named 'PortAventura' (the space in the name is deliberately left out for trademark reasons). In 2009, the resort hosted 3,310,000 visitors.

In December 2013, private equity firm KKR picked up a 49.9% stake in PortAventura from Investindustrial, which still owned 50.1%. In 2016, the resort was renamed 'PortAventura World Parks & Resort'. The second theme park, Ferrari Land, was inaugurated on April 7, 2017. PortAventura Dream Village, opened in 2017.