At Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, people traditionally eat grapes with the twelve midnight chimes on New Year’s Eve.
The custom is known in Spanish as las doce uvas de la suerte, or “the twelve grapes of luck.” Participants try to eat one grape with each of the clock’s twelve chimes at midnight. The twelve grapes are commonly linked symbolically with the twelve months of the coming year, and successfully eating them is associated with good fortune.
The tradition became especially widespread in Spain during the early twentieth century. One frequently repeated origin story says that grape growers promoted the practice after a surplus harvest, although the custom also had earlier elite precedents. Television broadcasts from Madrid’s clock in Puerta del Sol have helped make the ritual nationally recognizable and popular in Spanish-speaking communities abroad.