Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The video published by OK Diario shows Ms Cifuentes with a supermarket security guard

The head of Spain's Madrid region has stepped down amid shoplifting allegations, weeks after being accused of faking a master's degree.

Cristina Cifuentes condemned as a personal attack the publication of a video from 2011 showing her handing items to a supermarket security guard.

It is claimed she had taken two pots of anti-ageing cream worth €40 (£35; $50).

Ms Cifuentes, 53, gave up her master's last week when it emerged that two signatures on the document were forged.

A prominent figure in Spain's ruling centre-right PP (Partido Popular), Ms Cifuentes had already come under pressure from political opponents to resign because of the degree affair.

She told a press conference on Wednesday that she had planned to announce her resignation next week but had brought it forward in response to the latest allegations.

Her resignation is a blow to Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, whose party has faced a succession of corruption scandals. By stepping down she averted a motion of no confidence which she said would have brought Madrid under the control of the left-wing socialist and Podemos parties.

Mr Rajoy said the president of Madrid's regional government had done the right thing in stepping down.

Image copyright EPA Image caption Cristina Cifuentes has come under pressure to step down from her political opponents

Ms Cifuentes condemned the video that appeared on the OK Diario website on Wednesday as part of a "campaign of harassment aimed at bringing me down". At the time the video was recorded, she was number two in the Madrid assembly.

However, she went on to admit the recording was genuine.

"It was an involuntary mistake and it's being used to go beyond political issues, it's personal," she said. "I was already the target of blackmail two years ago for that video, but this time I tell you a red line has been crossed."

The erupting scandal surrounding Ms Cifuentes has also hit King Juan Carlos University, from which she received the fake master's degree. The head of its law institute has been suspended after initially supporting the Madrid region's president. The institute's deputy director earlier had resigned in protest at her signature being forged.

The region of Madrid is home to 6.5m people and Spain's capital city.</s>Cristina Cifuentes has resigned as president of the Madrid region. Photo: AFP

Cristina Cifuentes, the president of the Madrid regional government, announced her resignation on Wednesday morning hours after CCTV emerged that purported to show her stealing face cream.

The Madrid premier had been battling to stay in office after allegations surfaced earlier this month that she had faked a master’s diploma from Madrid's King Juan Carlos University.

The scandal had blighted the annual conference held by the ruling Popular Party (PP) with cross-party calls for her resignation over the matter.
• Derision as Madrid leader 'gives up' scandal-hit degree
• ANALYSIS: How fake degree scandal is provoking a new crisis in Spain's government

She refused to resign, claiming she had the support of the nation’s president Mariano Rajoy and instead ‘gave up’ the dodgy degree. But on Wednesday, online newspaper, OK Diario, published CCTV camera footage of her being detained and searched by store security guards after stealing two pots of Olay anti-aging cream. The footage taken in an Eroski supermarket in the capital dates from May 4, 2011. In a televised press conference, Cifuentes claimed that she had “inadvertently” pocketed the face creams but paid for them once her error was realised when she stopped by a security guard. Rajoy said that her resignation was inevitable. "She has done what she had to do. Her resignation had to happen in those circumstances," he said after her announcement.</s>April 25 (UPI) -- Madrid leader Cristina Cifuentes stepped down Wednesday amid shoplifting allegations, which are supported by video footage of the incident.

Cifuentes is accused of shoplifting two bottles of anti-aging cream in 2011. The video footage purportedly shows her handing them over to a supermarket security guard.

Last week, Cifuentes, 53, also surrendered a master's degree she obtained from King Juan Carlos University after allegations that two signatures on the document were forged. Accusations say she never attended classes or took exams for the degree.

"In the political situation in which we are living through, and after having spoken to my team about it, I'm announcing my resignation as the premier of the Madrid region," Cifuentes said. "In life, you have to think about the general interest above the interests of just one person."

Cifuentes said the video amounted to a "campaign of harassment and demolition that has gone beyond politics."

She also said the shoplifting incident had been a mistake -- "an involuntary thing" that she paid for.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said "a new stage has emerged in Madrid.

"I hope these things do not happen again," he said.</s>The head of Spain's Madrid region has resigned hours after a website broadcast a video allegedly showing her shoplifting cosmetics in a supermarket seven years ago, dealing another blow to the conservative government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

Regional president Cristina Cifuentes has already been under pressure after a month-long controversy over a master's law degree granted to her by a public university, which faked professors' signatures after she apparently failed to attend most classes.

The 53-year-old politician had been a rising star in Mr Rajoy's Popular Party (PP), carving out a name for herself as an outspoken advocate for zero tolerance to corruption both within and outside of the ruling party.

But for the past month she had been under fire for failing to produce the final paper for her 2012 degree at the King Juan Carlos University.

The university has acknowledged that signatures were faked, and prosecutors have opened an investigation.

The political opposition in the regional assembly was scheduling an early May vote of no confidence.

Citing sources within the ruling party, Spanish private news agency Europa Press reported Mr Rajoy himself ordered Ms Cifuentes' resignation before Wednesday's key debate in the national parliament over the 2018 national budget.

The decision followed the publishing of a 2011 video on news website OK Diario. The clip shows Ms Cifuentes at the security room of a local supermarket going through the content of her bags in the company of a guard.

OK Diario said Ms Cifuentes had been found shoplifting two cosmetic products.

The website said she was not charged because police who eventually showed up at the scene let her go.

The politician acknowledged the incident on Wednesday but told reporters it was a misunderstanding.

She also said the video and the allegations on her master's degree, first reported by El Diario newspaper in March, were part of a "harassment" campaign led by political opponents that had become "too personal".

"I think they have crossed red lines that are evident," Ms Cifuentes said.</s>The president of Madrid’s regional government has resigned after video footage emerged of her apparently being caught stealing two tubs of face cream seven years ago.



Cristina Cifuentes, one of the most high-profile figures in the conservative People’s party (PP) led by the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, had been under pressure to quit over allegations that she faked her master’s degree.

She said on Wednesday she was stepping down to spare her colleagues and her family any further embarrassment and discomfort.

Cifuentes had managed to cling on for weeks and had attempted to shift responsibility for the degree on to the university that awarded it to her, but the release of the video to the news site OKdiario appears to have sealed her fate.

Speaking at a hastily convened press conference, Cifuentes said the footage showed nothing more than an “involuntary mistake” she had made in 2011. She said she had become the subject of a very public and very personal “lynching” over recent days and weeks.

“This has been a campaign of harassment and demolition and one which has, for a while now, stopped being political and become personal. Some clear red lines have been crossed,” she said.

Cifuentes, who had governed that Madrid region since 2015, said she was stepping aside so as not to jeopardise her administration’s achievements or allow her political opponents to take control.

Speaking after the resignation, Rajoy said: “Cristina Cifuentes has done what she had to do. I think the situation made her resignation obligatory.”

Opposition parties in the regional assembly had called a vote of no confidence in early May. Her departure means the PP can now replace her with another candidate.

“The alternative would be a leftist government that would undoubtedly not just raise taxes but also destroy many of the things we’ve done and mean an administration that would be bad for the people of Madrid,” Cifuentes said.

She said she had taken the decision to resign a few days earlier and had been planning to announce her departure in early May. She said Wednesday’s events had forced her hand.

“I have already endured about 35 days of permanent exposure and lynching morning, noon and night by land, sea and air,” she said.

“But what happened today has crossed a line … First of all, I don’t want to hurt my family, which is why I’ve taken this decision – for my family, so that they don’t have to continue suffering. I also believe it’s what’s best for Madrid, for the people of Madrid and, of course, for my party.”

Cifuentes’s troubles began on 21 March when El Diario first raised questions over the validity of the master’s degree she had been awarded by King Juan Carlos University in Madrid. She threatened to sue the site and later gave up the qualification.

It subsequently emerged that Pablo Casado, an MP and the PP’s deputy communications chief, had claimed to hold a postgraduate degree from Harvard University but had earned the qualification after attending a four-day course in Madrid.

The video leaked to OKdiario appears to show Cifuentes emptying out her bag in the office of a Madrid supermarket to reveal two jars of Olay cream – worth about €40 – which she then pays for.

The editor of OKdiario, Eduardo Inda, dismissed suggestions that the footage had been leaked by Cifuentes’s own party in an attempt to force her out and to hold on to power in the region.

“The person who gave us the video had nothing to do with either the PP or politics,” Inda told the Spanish TV programme Al Rojo Vivo.

Like the PP nationally, the Madrid branch of the party has been mired in a series of corruption scandals. One of Cifuentes’s predecessors, Esperanza Aguirre, resigned as head of the regional party two years ago, admitting “corruption is killing us”.



Rajoy had refused to heed calls to sack Cifuentes. Last summer he became the first serving Spanish prime minister to testify in a criminal case, relating to an illegal funding racket within the PP.</s>The head of Spain's Madrid region Cristina Cifuentes is shown revealing the contents of her handbag to a security guard, after allegedly being caught shoplifting cosmetics from a supermarket in 2011. The release of the video has prompted her recent resignation.</s>The president of the Madrid region, Cristina Cifuentes, has resigned after a month of scandal culminated in the release of video footage apparently showing her being caught stealing face creams from a supermarket.

Once touted as a candidate to be Spain’s first female prime minister, Ms Cifuentes said on Wednesday that she was stepping aside after suffering a “lynching, day and night, from every quarter” in recent weeks.

The security video footage, made public by OK Diario newspaper, dates from 2011, when Ms Cifuentes was vice-president of the Madrid regional parliament for the conservative Popular Party (PP). It shows her being accompanied by a security guard into a room where she is asked to take out of her handbag two containers of face cream which she had not paid for. She eventually pays for the creams, which reportedly were worth around €40.

“I took it by mistake, they told me and when I was leaving I paid,” Ms Cifuentes said in her resignation statement, shortly after the video was made public and had gone viral.

She has not resigned as president of the Madrid PP.

The supermarket scandal follows detailed accusations made by another newspaper in March that Ms Cifuentes had obtained a master’s degree from a public university without attending classes or completing the coursework, and having signed on several months after the course began. The allegations also charged that senior figures in the university had colluded in an attempted cover-up.

Ms Cifuentes denied any wrongdoing related to her degree, claiming the scandal was a witch-hunt orchestrated by the political left, which was preparing a no-confidence motion to remove her from office.

But on Wednesday, she said that before the latest news broke she had been planning to resign next week due to the affair surrounding the degree.

“I’m stepping aside so that the left does not govern,” she said.

After several weeks during which the PP’s support for the Madrid regional leader had at times seemed to falter without collapsing altogether, party leader and prime minister Mariano Rajoy welcomed the news.

“Cristina Cifuentes has done what she had to do,” he said. “I think her resignation was unavoidable in this situation.”

Questions are being asked about why the security video emerged seven years after being recorded, and who was behind its release. OK Diario’s links to the political right have raised suspicions that it was the PP itself which leaked the footage in order to ensure the departure of a high-profile politician who was becoming an embarrassment.

Ms Cifuentes appeared to hint that rivals within her own party had been involved in releasing the incriminating footage. She said the video had been circulating for some time and that she had contacted the police previously after being blackmailed with it.

A series of corruption cases has depleted senior ranks of the PP in Madrid in recent years, meaning the party is short of options to replace Ms Cifuentes, who was once seen as a possible successor to Mr Rajoy.</s>The head of Spain's Madrid region, Cristina Cifuentes, has stepped down amid shoplifting allegations.

A video from 2011, published on the OK Diario website, showed her handing items to a supermarket security guard. She was recently accused of faking a master's degree.</s>A leading member of Spain's ruling Popular Party (PP), Cristina Cifuentes, has resigned as president of the Madrid region after a scandal over her allegedly fraudulent master's degree was compounded by revelations she had been arrested for shoplifting.

A leading member of Spain's ruling Popular Party (PP), Cristina Cifuentes, has resigned as president of the Madrid region after a scandal over her allegedly fraudulent master's degree was compounded by revelations she had been arrested for shoplifting.

Ms Cifuentes, tipped by many as a potential successor to Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy as leader of the PP, had stubbornly refused to resign even as a judicial investigation was launched into her master's degree in public law from the King Juan Carlos University in Madrid.

But she buckled after a video was published yesterday morning appearing to show her being stopped by supermarket security guards for taking anti-ageing cream without paying. Her fate was sealed as the once centrist party Ciudadanos stated that it would support a motion of no confidence in the regional parliament - meaning that the PP would lose power in a region it has governed since 1995 - unless Ms Cifuentes stepped down.

"I have held on for more than 34 to 35 days of permanent exposure. What has happened today crosses a line," Ms Cifuentes said in reference to the fresh allegations as she resigned in front of the cameras. Yesterday morning, the online newspaper 'OK Diario' reported that the politician had been arrested by supermarket security guards in 2011 on suspicion of having shoplifted two pots of anti-ageing cream.

A video that was published with the story showed Ms Cifuentes emptying her handbags in front of a guard in a store backroom. "It was an involuntary mistake," Ms Cifuentes claimed afterwards.

"Without realising, I took two products worth 40 euro, they told me about it and I paid up. "That recording has been used to go beyond politics," Ms Cifuentes said, adding that she had previously been the victim of attempted extortion owing to the tape.

"I don't want to hurt my family, for whom I am taking this decision so that they don't carry on suffering this Calvary.

Mr Rajoy told reporters in Congress that Ms Cifuentes had "done what she had to do" and "opened up a new era for the PP in Madrid". Ms Cifuentes hinted that she has been unfairly treated during coverage of the two scandals, and appeared to draw a line between her pledges to tackle corruption and attacks from her opponents.</s>MADRID (Reuters) - The head of the region of Madrid Cristina Cifuentes resigned on Wednesday after a turbulent month for the People's Party (PP) politician which included claims she had falsified her masters degree and been caught shoplifting in 2011.

Madrid has always been a stronghold for the center-right party, led by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, but is under growing pressure from market-friendly Ciudadanos which has jumped ahead in the polls amid PP corruption scandals.

A close circuit TV video published by newspaper OK Diario on Wednesday showed Cifuentes emptying her handbag for a security guard in a local supermarket after being accused of taking anti-aging cream.

Cifuentes, before tending her resignation, said taking the cream, worth around 40 euros, had been an "involuntarily error".
The President of the Community of Madrid, Cristina Cifuentes, resigns after the discovery of a video of her stealing anti-aging cream in a supermarket and after several weeks of controversy after it came to light that she obtained her master's degree fraudulently.