Spanish speaker of house busted playing Candy Crush on the job

The speaker of Spain's parliament was caught on camera playing what appeared to be Candy Crush on her tablet on Tuesday.

Making matters worse, the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, was addressing the house – in fact, he was giving no less than his "state of the nation" speech.

Celia Villalobos, a member of the ruling "Popular" party, is the vice-president of the congress of deputies – the equivalent to the deputy speaker – and had taken over from president of the house Jesús Posada for a short time that afternoon.

The opposition Socialist party accused Villalobos of setting a "very bad example" to the public.

As it stands, Spain is on extremely unsteady ground.

With an economy on the verge of collapse and extremism growing on both the right and left, it is probably not the right time for Candy Crush – not at work, anyway.

Parliamentary sources, however, have denied Ms Villalobos was playing the popular game; they say she was reading the news.

Whether or not she picked up Mr Rajoy's speech is another matter – he spoke optimistically about job creation and the success of austerity measures his government introduced.