Homage to 'cava' loses its sparkle as Catalonia's critics boycott the bubbly

This should be the most effervescent moment of the year for cava, the sparkling wine from the Spanish region of Catalonia that is the world's most popular bubbly. Each year, the venerable family firm Freixenet launches a spectacular annual Christmas advertising campaign , this year starring Demi Moore.

But Spain's bitter political and regional rivalries have blighted this year's festivities. Spanish nationalists opposed to Catalonia's drive for independence have retaliated by mounting a boycott of the region's best-known tipple.

It was prompted by some disparaging remarks made last year by Catalonia's pro-independence leader, Josep Lluis Carod-Rovira, about Madrid's bid to host the 2012 Olympics.

That campaign, spread by telephone text messages, dented Freixenet's Spanish sales for 2003-2004 by 4 per cent, a loss of about three million bottles.

And this year things look set to get worse. From its ancestral seat in Sant Sadurni d'Anoia, in the heart of Catalonia's cava region west of Barcelona, Freixenet last week announced a drop in profits of more than 17 per cent for 2004-2005 - attributed in part to nationalist spite .

The firm's patriarch, Jose Luis Bonet, warns of a dire Christmas. "Political circumstances have hit the cava sector in an unfair and painful way," he said.

Mr Bonet said the boycott "not only affects our image and sales, but causes us moral damage".

The passions over Catalonia and, by default cava, are unlikely to wane. The regional government, a coalition of Socialists and the pro-independence Republican Left party, is determined to broaden its autonomy and further loosen ties to Madrid.

Catalans want to define themselves and be accepted as a nation, a concept that is hard to reconcile with the Spanish constitution that defines only Spain as a nation. The rest are covered by the phrase "autonomous nationalities".

The conflict has become the most serious domestic problem facing the Socialist government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who depends for his majority on the support of Catalan deputies.

A new draft statute for Catalonia is now being debated by parliament in Madrid, which must approve it. Everyone realises that if parliament makes concessions to Barcelona, they will be seized on by nationalists in the Basque country, another region bent on securing greater self-rule.

As Spain's conservatives warn that the country is breaking up, and as they wage an ever-shriller campaign against the Catalans, canny cava producers have unveiled a pragmatic solution to their own particular dilemma.

They are now starting to promote cava as a drink that is "as Spanish as wine from La Rioja".