Galician boycott of Catalan goods grows during Christmas

Boycott of Catalan products enters the Christmas basket

A man punched a fruit seller on Marqués de Pontejos street in A Coruña for selling pears from Lleida. The incident remains a marginal anecdote, but it acts as a thermometer: the so-called Catalan conflict has ceased to be a matter for politicians and has entered the shopping cart. In Galicia, food and drinks that customers identify with Catalonia are losing weight in Christmas purchases and corporate gift hampers. The boycott of Catalan products is no longer debated: it is practiced.

What the data says: less cava, less cured meat, less fruit

Major retailers confirm a drop in demand for items associated with Catalonia, especially cava, certain cured meats and fruits. There is no official statement or campaign label, only purchasing behavior that has become entrenched. Galician distributors working with Catalan brands confirm this without ambiguity: one company based in A Coruña stopped selling a butifarra and a longaniza that were "excellent" simply because they didn't sell.

The figure that provides context for everything: Catalonia sells around €1.2 billion worth of products to Galicia. The Galician region is one of the top twenty markets for Catalan companies and absorbs nearly 3% of their inter-regional exports, according to the C-Intereg 2019 report using 2016 data. Figures that, today, seem somewhat weaker.

Catalan cava loses domestic market and disguises itself as Valencian

Cava production for the Spanish market fell by 12.1% during 2018, and the trend continued into the trinc year. Of the 244 million bottles produced, 79 million were destined for the domestic market, almost ten million fewer than expected. In July, the Regulatory Council of Cava acknowledged its concern over the decline in internal consumption.

Until now, wineries compensated with exports. Now, a less elegant strategy appears: reserving batches of ready-made, unlabeled bottles to be sold as Valencian or Extremaduran cava. Images of a Catalan winery showing cages full of bottles destined for Valencia, supposedly to be labeled there as local products, have circulated throughout the sector and angered both allies and critics.

Is it a boycott or just a change in habits?

Here the narrative splits. One current holds that there is an ideological rejection and that many companies explicitly request that their Christmas hampers contain not a single Catalan product. Another argues the opposite: that there is no organized boycott, but rather that Galician sparkling wines have become fashionable and customers have changed preferences without more ado. And a third reduces it to the crisis of Catalan cava, which was never the favorite of the average consumer.

The most uncomfortable argument comes from those who warn that the punishment falls on SMEs with employees, not on political acronyms. "Their products are very good, and behind them are many affected workers," summarizes the manager of a distributor in A Coruña. No one disputes this; no one changes habits either.

Codorníu's advertising that ignited the market

In barely 24 hours, nearly 10,000 people took to social media to demand the withdrawal of a Codorníu campaign using the slogan "We will do it again," the same motto claimed by imprisoned separatists and at Barcelona demonstrations. It did little good for the brand to explain that it was all due to mere coincidence. The episode confirms to what extent consumers read politics into every label.

How much does Galicia weigh in Catalan sales?

Less than it seems and more than is admitted. The 3% of inter-regional exports is a modest portion, but concentrated in sensitive categories. In parallel, nearly 300 Catalan companies that left Catalonia due to the political climate have ended up taking refuge in Galicia, a transfer that the community itself displays with irony.

In the end, the detail that breaks the two-sided narrative: Galicia has never declared an official boycott of anything. It hasn't been necessary. While Catalan cava travels to Valencia to disguise itself as local, Galician sparkling wines are enjoying their best moment. The market does not forgive and, moreover, charges interest.