Dodgy University Titles

It all started with an arrest for shoplifting. It wasn’t much, just a couple of pots of face cream from the local supermarket, and the whole thing was hushed up afterwards. A couple of years later, the shoplifter, Cristina Cifuentes, president of the Madrid Community (and of some 6.5 million souls) was found by a then obscure left-leaning news-site, eldiario.es, to have fudged her Master’s degree. Not much happened as a result, since Ms Cifuentes, being a politician, had ‘immunity’, and anyways, her party – the Partido Popular – didn’t see it as anything of special importance.

In fact, she only resigned – four months later – when a far-right news site, OKDiario, published a copy of the Eroski video of the embarrassing theft by Cifuentes of the two pots of cream (RTVE video here).

Ms Cifuentes had obtained her Masters from the University of King Juan Carlos, and it gradually became clear that she was only one of a group of politicians (and, one can assume, captains of industry) who had earned themselves Masters without the formality of having properly studied for one.

The first name that came up was one of the leading candidates to take over the Partido Popular from Mariano Rajoy following his departure from politics (a motion of censure over the PP’s infamous corruption had seen the end of his presidency) Pablo Casado, who took over the leadership of the PP, and made light of his masters degree. Again, he had immunity, and his supporters frankly didn’t care what he might have written on his résumé.

Within a couple of months of the PSOE taking over the running of the country, the Minister of Health Carmen Montón was found to have also been a recipient of the URJC’s particular policy regarding titles. She quickly resigned.

Following this, Pablo Casado attempted to show that Pedro Sánchez also had a dodgy masters (from another, rather more reputable university), and when that proved false, that he had improperly copied some text – plagiarised - from another source in a book he had written.

Then it came out that the leader of Ciudadanos was changing his own profile regarding his titles. The only political leader who seemed safe from this witch-hunt being the fellow with the pony tail Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Podemos, because his other job is a university don.

The URJC, by now looking a bit tawdry, was then found to have sold titles to five hundred Italian engineers for the modest price of 11,000€ a pop.

Pablo Casado, the PP leader, was threatened with an interview with the Supreme Court, but – as the eldiario.es has suggested a shade waspishly – several of the judges there were placed by the last PP government. Casado, we hear, and to the relief of the Populares, has no case to answer. Nevertheless, and despite support from every newspaper from El País sideways, Casado is quickly slipping into a difficult position regarding his reputation.

We think he’ll be gone within the month.