REUTERS/Juan Medina

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain’s culture minister resigned on Wednesday from a week-old government following local media reports that he had avoided paying taxes while working as a TV journalist 10 years ago. “If Maxim Huerta tried to defraud the tax office, he should resign immediately, and if not, Pedro Sanchez should dismiss him.”

In a Twitter message after the resignation, Iglesias said the prime minister had initially backed Huerta but “Spain is no longer what it was”. A court last year ordered that he pay over 360,000 euros to the tax office — the amount he tried to evade plus fines and interest payments, it added. Huerta's resignation comes just weeks after former prime minister Mariano Rajoy was ousted from his position in a confidence vote over a long-running corruption scandal that tainted the conservative Popular Party,

Huerta said he was stepping down to protect the new Socialist government of Prime Minister Perdo Sanchez from criticism. Sanchez, a socialist who promised to root out corruption from the country's institutions, had been under pressure Wednesday to sack Huerta after Spanish news website El Confidencial reported that the minister had been fined for failing to declare over 218,000 euros ($257,000.) Spaniards have been enthusiastic so far in their reception of Sanchez’s Socialist government, which broke with six years of right-wing domination and contains more women than men in ministerial posts for the first time in the country’s history.
Spanish Minister of Culture and Sport Màxim Huerta resigns after tax issues, becoming the minister with the shortest time in office in Spain.