Spain's PM rejects calls for snap election as scandals mount

MADRID (Reuters) -Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez asked citizens for forgiveness after his close ally quit his posts earlier on Thursday over graft allegations, and said his Socialist Party would undergo an external audit, but rejected the opposition's calls for an early election.

"We should not have trusted him (Santos Cerdan)," a sombre-looking Sanchez told a news briefing at his Socialist Party's headquarters, acknowledging that the accusations against him were very serious.

With various scandals swirling around his minority government, the case poses one of the biggest threats yet to the survival of the country's fragile leftist coalition government. Sanchez said, however, most of the attacks on his government were not grounded in reality.

(Reporting by Inti Landauro and David Latona, Andrei Khalip)

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