At Madrid's Puerta del Sol, celebrants traditionally eat twelve grapes during the New Year's Eve countdown.
The custom is known in Spanish as las doce uvas de la suerte, meaning “the twelve grapes of luck.” One grape is eaten with each stroke of the clock at midnight. Completing the sequence is traditionally associated with good fortune in the twelve months ahead.
Madrid's clock at Puerta del Sol made the ritual especially visible through public celebrations and radio and television broadcasts. The practice spread widely across Spain and also appears in several Spanish-speaking countries, though local customs and timing can vary.
A frequently repeated origin story connects the tradition with Spanish grape growers and a surplus harvest around the beginning of the twentieth century. Historians also point to earlier elite customs of eating grapes at New Year. The precise origin is debated, but the twelve-grape ritual itself is firmly established.