Election candidate quits over bare breast joke

A Spanish election candidate quit the race today after posting a fake photograph on her Facebook account of the country's defence minister apparently showing a bare breast.

The conservative Popular Party candidate, Francisca Pol, apologised over the picture of Defence Minister Carme Chacon, altered to appear as if her shirt was open to reveal a breast.

"The candidate for the Senate list for Majorca today submitted her resignation from all public posts," said a Popular Party statement.

Pol quit voluntarily so as not to harm her party and fellow candidates in the November 20 general election, it said. The Popular Party is leading the polls ahead of the vote.

The digitally enhanced photograph of Chacon meeting with defence officials, widely shown in the Spanish media, has since been taken down from the candidate's Facebook page.

"A thousand pardons for the image of the minister that I posted within the colloquial context of this page, which is an absolutely false montage circulating on the Internet and which I immediately withdrew when realizing it was an inopportune joke in very bad taste," Pol said on Facebook.