Spanish PM fights back against thesis plagiarism allegation

MADRID: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez angrily fought back Thursday against allegations that he plagiarised his doctoral thesis, in the same week his health minister resigned over reports of academic irregularities.

"The information appearing in certain media claiming the existence of plagiarism in my doctoral thesis is absolutely FALSE," Socialist Sanchez tweeted, just two days after Carmen Monton quit the health portfolio under a cloud of suspicion.

Spanish media said Monton had been awarded grades without attending classes and that her final project contained plagiarised passages -- charges she denied. "I shall take legal action to defend my honour and dignity if what has been published is not rectified," Sanchez said, after a front-page story by conservative daily ABC said he used "cut and paste" to produce his doctoral dissertation.

The article claimed the premier´s paper on innovations in Spanish economic diplomacy, written in 2012 when he was a professor of economics at the private Camilo Jose Cela university near Madrid, included entire paragraphs lifted almost word for word from an article by fellow economists, and from a government presentation.