People in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol tradition 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 at each stroke of the clock at midnight on December 31. Finishing all twelve is traditionally associated with good luck for the twelve months ahead.
Madrid’s clock in Puerta del Sol provides the nationally recognized countdown. Spanish television broadcasts the clock so people across Spain can follow the chimes, and similar celebrations have spread to Spanish-speaking communities in other countries.
The tradition is often linked to a surplus grape harvest in the early twentieth century, although accounts differ about how strongly that commercial explanation shaped the custom. The grapes are eaten in sequence, not all at once before midnight.