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The Spanish region of Catalonia will hold an election for its regional parliament on September 27, a vote the main parties want to use as a proxy for a referendum on independence opposed by Madrid.

The wealthy Spanish region of Catalonia will hold an election for its regional parliament on September 27, a vote the main parties want to use as a proxy for a referendum on independence opposed by Madrid.
At the beginning of September the BBC’s Hardtalk program interviewed Raül Romeva, the top candidate to the Catalan premiership for the secessionist bloc Junts pel Sí (Together for Yes).

But it wasn’t until a week later that it went viral on Spanish social media after parts of it were uploaded to a YouTube channel run by Dolça Catalunya, a website that compiles anti-secession information.

The video, which weaves together eight different moments from the interview, has been viewed around 675,000 times since then. And a search for “BBC Romeva” on Topsy, a social media analysis website, shows 6,500 tweets in the last week.

In the clips from the program, which specializes in tough, occasionally controversial interviews, the Catalan secessionist candidate is seen admitting that he is Spanish, seems unsure of the name of his party, and laughs at corruption allegations within Catalonia’s ruling party, premier Artur Mas’s CDC. Host Stephen Sackur, a former BBC correspondent in Washington and Brussels, has no problem interrupting Romeva to say things such as “that’s nonsense” or to tell Romeva to drop the “political jargon.”

Here is the full interview: