Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.

Welcome to the Inquiry on the BBC World Service.

Each week we bring you four expert witnesses, answering one pressing question from the news.

In early June this year, the President of Catalonia, Carlos Pujdemon, stood in front of a microphone in a stone courtyard filled with orange trees.

The ancient palace around him had been the seat of Catalan government since the Middle

Ages.

Back then, Catalonia was independent. Now it's an

autonomous region that's long been part of Spain. With his floppy fringe,

glasses and salmon pink tie, President Pudge de Monn seemed an unlikely

revolutionary, but his speech that day proposed a momentous change, a referendum in October this year when Catalans will vote on whether to leave

Spain and become an independent republic. Independence is in the air. Just two days earlier a tweet from the President of Iraqi Kurdistan

announced a referendum there too at around the same time.

The question, whether Iraqi Kurdistan should become independent of Iraq,

where it too is currently an autonomous region.

But both these votes face a big problem. Their national governments haven't agreed to the polls.

Spain and Iraq say no matter how people vote, these regions won't be becoming freshly minted states.

So this week on the inquiry, we're asking, who gets to have their own country? Part 1, a people's prerogative.

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