Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has acknowledged an “error” in a book of his which reportedly reproduces parts of a diplomat’s speech without referencing him, just a week after being accused of plagiarising his thesis.
“There was an error in a reference which will be corrected in a new edition,” Sanchez told reporters in Salzburg in Austria, where EU leaders were gathered.
The news comes as a Madrid university is embroiled in a “Mastergate” scandal that has seen several high-profile politicians, including the head of the opposition Popular Party, accused of being gifted degrees without attending lecturers.
Spanish daily El Pais reported that the book written by Sanchez and another economist in 2013 reproduced, without quotation marks or any reference, entire pages of a speech made by a Spanish diplomat even including a mistake in the original text.
The book – The Spanish economy’s new diplomacy – includes Sanchez’s 2012 doctoral thesis as well as additions which include the diplomat’s speech.
Sanchez: There was an error in a reference which will be corrected in a new edition.
