This article is about the Spanish politician. For the Australian economist, see Cristina Pieta Cifuentes.
In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Cifuentes and the second or maternal family name is Cuencas.
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (March 2015) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the Spanish article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Spanish Wikipedia article at [[:es:Cristina Cifuentes]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|es|Cristina Cifuentes}} to the talk page.
María Cristina Cifuentes Cuencas (born 1 July 1964) is a former Spanish politician of the People's Party. She was the President of the Community of Madrid from 24 June 2015 to her 25 April 2018 resignation.[1] From 16 January 2012 to 13 April 2015, she served as the Government Delegate in the Community of Madrid.[2]
In 2013, she suffered a traffic accident in Madrid while she was riding her motorbike, which put her in a coma for nearly a month.[3][4]
After being the Government Delegate in Madrid from 2012 to 2015, Cifuentes was elected President of the Autonomous Community of Madrid with the support of the centre-right Spanish party Citizens, having won the 2015 regional election and having obtained 48 representatives out of 129 in the Assembly of Madrid.
On 21 March 2018, Cifuentes was alleged to have fraudulently obtained her Master's degree from King Juan Carlos University.[5] On 5 April 2018, a judicial investigation of the case was opened.[6]
On 25 April 2018, she resigned as President of the Community of Madrid, after the release of a 2011 video that showed her being detained in a supermarket for shoplifting (goods worth €40),[7] with Ángel Garrido succeeding her as acting president of the community.[8][9] On 27 April 2018, she resigned from the presidency of the People's Party of the Community of Madrid.[10] On 8 May 2018, Cifuentes resigned from her seat in the Assembly of Madrid and announced her retirement from politics.[11]
On 2 September 2019 the Audiencia Nacional charged Cifuentes together with fellow former regional premiers Ignacio González and Esperanza Aguirre with alleged crimes of illicit funding, diversion of public money and document forgery in the proceedings of the Púnica corruption case.[12][13]
As of October 2019, she appeared in the television program Ya es mediodía as a panelist,[14] and in February 2020, she was signed on Todo es mentira.[15]