At Spain’s Puerta del Sol New Year’s Eve celebration, people traditionally eat grapes with the clock’s twelve midnight chimes.
The custom is known as the twelve grapes of luck. Participants try to eat one grape at each of the twelve chimes at midnight on December 31. Each grape represents one month of the coming year, and successfully keeping pace is widely associated with good fortune and prosperity.
Madrid’s Puerta del Sol is the country’s best-known public focal point for the ritual. The clock’s chimes are broadcast nationally, allowing people across Spain to follow the same countdown even when they are celebrating at home or elsewhere.
The tradition is often linked to a surplus grape harvest in the early twentieth century, when growers promoted grapes as a festive New Year custom. It is not the same as eating twelve different foods: the defining feature is twelve grapes eaten in rhythm with the chimes.