In Spain, people traditionally eat 12 grapes with the 12 midnight chimes on New Year’s Eve.
The custom is known as the twelve grapes of luck, or las doce uvas de la suerte. Participants try to eat one grape at each stroke of the clock at midnight, with each grape representing one month of the coming year.
Madrid’s Puerta del Sol is the country’s best-known public setting for the ritual. The clock’s chimes are broadcast nationwide, allowing people in homes and public gatherings to follow the same countdown.
A popular story links the tradition to a surplus grape harvest in the early twentieth century, although the practice also developed from earlier elite customs of eating grapes at New Year. The goal is luck and prosperity, not simply finishing a snack quickly.