The former Cuban president Fidel Castro, 88, appeared in public for the first time in more than a year last Monday, greeting a delegation of Venezuelans and appearing “full of vitality”, official media reported on Saturday.

It was his first known appearance outside his home since Cuba in December agreed to normalise relations with the US.

Official media showed images of a seated Castro shaking hands with the visiting Venezuelans through the window of his vehicle, wearing a baseball cap and a windbreaker. There was no explanation of why five days passed before the encounter was reported.

Castro met at a school with 33 Venezuelans, who were on a solidarity mission to Cuba, for about 90 minutes. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, oil-rich Venezuela has become communist Cuba’s closest ally and chief benefactor.

Castro impressed the Venezuelans with a firm, long handshake and a lucid mind, the newspaper Juventud Rebelde reported in a first-person account.

Castro relayed “multiple details about life in Venezuela, especially now that this great nation has become the bull’s eye for imperial greed”, the report said, in apparent reference to US sanctions on Venezuela that declared the South American nation a national security threat.

“Fidel is full of vitality,” the report said.

Castro’s last public sighting came on 8 January 2014, at the opening of a Havana cultural centre sponsored by one of his favorite Cuban artists, Alexis Leyva, alias “Kcho”.

In December 2014, US president Barack Obama and Cuban president Raúl Castro, Fidel’s younger brother, announced they would re-establish diplomatic ties, opening a new era after the turbulent relations that arose after the Castros came to power in 1959.

Fidel Castro stepped down due to illness provisionally in 2006 and definitively in 2008, handing off duties to his younger brother, who is 83. Fidel writes an occasional newspaper column, receives dignitaries at home, and rarely appears in public.

His current role in policy-making is unknown. Many Cubans presume Raúl Castro consults with his brother on major decisions, and Fidel Castro’s long silence after the December announcement raised questions about his health and whether he agreed with the rapprochement with the Americans.