A 2013 motorcycle crash left Cristina Cifuentes in a coma for almost a month and, by her account, brought her close to death several times. The former president of the Community of Madrid has also described her departure from politics as deeply traumatic.
In an interview with Bertín Osborne, Cifuentes recalled that a car struck her motorcycle and threw her into the air. She said the accident left her with 13 fractured ribs and a traumatised heart; SAMUR saved her life. Her time in intensive care, she explained, changed how she viewed pain and fear. RTVE’s archive for La cena de los idiotas lists Cifuentes and Bertín Osborne among the participants. Pablo Echenique and Montserrat Domínguez also appear.
She described leaving politics as traumatic. Cifuentes left political life in 2018, after publication of a video recorded in 2011 that showed her leaving a supermarket with unpaid cosmetic products. When announcing her resignation, she said the incident had happened by mistake and involuntarily, without her being aware of it. Her departure marked the end of her public political career and preceded her move into communications and television. She later appeared on MasterChef Celebrity and Hasta el fin del mundo. In 2021, she received the Gold Medal of the Community of Madrid.
Family and public life
Cifuentes has rejected the idea that she grew up privileged. Her father, José Luis Cifuentes, was an artillery general, and her mother, Fuencisla Cuencas, was a homemaker. She said her parents made sacrifices to raise eight children. She earned money teaching and working in a shop, and also sold encyclopedias. RUSSPAIN has separately covered a proposed family-protection decree, a policy issue distinct from her account of family life.
She studied law at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and joined its staff as a civil servant in 1990. Her political involvement began earlier: she joined Nuevas Generaciones de Alianza Popular at 16 and entered the Madrid Assembly as a deputy in 1991. She later held senior Assembly roles and became the government delegate in the Community of Madrid during Mariano Rajoy’s first term.
Cifuentes met architect Francisco Javier Aguilar Viyuela at university in the late 1980s. They married in September 1988 and have two children. Her father died in 2015 after living with Alzheimer’s disease.
