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This paper was at first intended to explore the nature and functioning of parenthetical discoursal units in the political debate genre. However, upon closer inspection of the functioning of these units, it was thought appropriate to pin down a more general criterion under which the concept of "parenthetical" could be subsumed. The notion deemed here appropriate for this purpose is that of discontinuous designation or referential twist, which will be referred to throughout this paper as referential leap or leap for short. The research presented here is not meant to be a statistical study based on large quantities of data and backed up in a scientifically rigorous way. Rather, it sets out to offer some impressionistic insights into referential discontinuities, including parentheticals, as attested in the political discussion broadcast on TVE on December 14th, 2015, between the leaders of the up to then two major political parties in Spain, namely, Mariano Rajoy, as the representative of the conservative party (PP), and Pedro Sánchez, as the representative of the socialist party (PSOE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]