Barcelona Letter / Patrice Harrington: Cava sales are losing fizz in Catalonia this festive season as indignant Spaniards boycott the wannabe-free region's sparkling wine and the world's most popular bubbly.
A massive 58 per cent of the chubby- bodied bottles is normally sold at Christmas time, which makes cava quite a weapon in this modern Spanish-Catalonian war, simmering for over a year now.
The yuletide boycott is almost certainly as a result of the region's dogged quest for autonomy, which increased in flinty-eyed intensity this year.
But, surreally, the trouble all began with the 2004 American A-league world roller hockey championships.
Men wearing roller-skates is not a sporting image one would associate with bull-fighting Spain, hence its appeal to the Catalans, who have become embarrassingly good at it.
Despite appealing their case to the International Federation of Roller Sports, the all-Catalan team was not allowed national representation at last year's games, a decision seen as prompted by Spanish centralist interests.
In retaliation, Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira, president of the Catalan separatist party ERC, zealously warned the people of the region not to support Madrid in its bid for the 2012 Olympics - and the cava-boycotting talk wailed to life like an angry newborn.
Carod-Rovira was immediately shoved back on to the airwaves to apologise unreservedly, which, as a stubborn Catalan hothead, he found himself quite unable to do once he sat down and opened his mouth.
"I have nothing against Madrid," he unconvincingly asserted. "I spoke in the heat of the moment, but I was only voicing an opinion that many other Catalans share."
And with this qualification, you could almost hear the clinking of nervous cava bottles as the dust began to settle on their shoulders.
Suddenly a political symbol, bottles of cava were removed from Christmas hampers throughout Spain as corporate orders from Madrid down to the Costas were cancelled.
The Popular Party's Daniel Sirera brandished a bottle in the Catalan parliament, as if the debate here were not emotional enough, and a text-message campaign dented leading cava producer Freixenet's sales for 2003-2004 by 4 per cent, a loss of about three million bottles.
A year on, matters are worse, because, as one commentator put it, "they see now the boycott is working and it encourages them to continue". Freixenet president Josep-Lluís Bonet told financial newspaper Expansión that the boycott "has certainly adversely affected the prestige and position of our brand". To the tune of a staggering 17 per cent for 2004-2005, it turns out.
Not even Demi Moore, who stars in this year's Freixenet Christmas advertising campaign, can entice the spiteful Spanish to throw down the gauntlet. Our own Pierce Brosnan, last year's celebrity endorser, fared no better.
But support for cava has come from surprising quarters, including the office of Madrid's autonomous government, whose president, Esperanza Aguirre, is notorious for her politically incorrect slips-of-tongue.
These included describing Catalonia as "outside of national territory" last August when complaining about Spanish energy company Endesa's takeover by the Barcelona-based Gas Natural.
Despite her personal views about the region, Aguirre has just gone out and bought herself 500 bottles of Freixenet. Obviously partial to the zingy stuff, she did the same last year during the boycott.
President of the Confederation of Spanish Commerce Pere Llorens i Lorente pointed out that while cava is made in Catalonia, "the cork which is used in the bottle tops is collected in Extremadura and the glass is made in Valencia, so whatever way you look at it, the boycott prejudices all of Spain and not only Catalonia".
Not everyone sees it that way, though, as a recent letter in Barcelona's La Vanguardia newspaper shows. "I can't believe this," begins Ignacio Velasco. "We are a Catalan company with a multicultural staff. We supply to all of Spain and export to the whole world.
"For Christmas, out of respect for our best clients, we sent them each a crate of cava. One client sent back our gift. Why? Because the cava was Catalan! I thought all of the commentary was exaggerated but now I have seen it for myself. How is it possible that people have such attitudes?"
Returning free booze at Christmas? You have us there, Ignacio . . .