In Spain’s New Year’s Eve tradition, people eat twelve grapes with the twelve midnight chimes.
The custom is known as las doce uvas de la suerte, meaning “the twelve grapes of luck.” Participants try to eat one grape at each chime of the clock, with the twelve grapes representing the twelve months ahead. Successfully completing the sequence is popularly associated with good fortune for the coming year.
Many people follow the chimes broadcast from Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, where the clock of the Real Casa de Correos is the best-known national reference point. Families and friends often prepare the grapes in advance, sometimes buying small seedless varieties or peeled and packaged portions to make the fast-paced ritual easier.
The tradition is sometimes linked to a surplus grape harvest around the start of the twentieth century, although its exact development is more complicated and earlier grape-eating customs existed. The midnight chimes are the key feature; eating twelve grapes at any other time is not the traditional sequence.