The annual New Year’s Eve countdown at Puerta del Sol takes place in Madrid.
Puerta del Sol is a major public square in the center of Spain’s capital. Its clock tower provides the midnight chimes used for the country’s best-known grape-eating countdown. Television coverage from the square allows people throughout Spain and in Spanish-speaking communities elsewhere to follow the ceremony.
Participants traditionally eat twelve grapes, one during each of the twelve midnight chimes. The practice is associated with luck for the twelve months ahead. The clock also has preliminary sounds before the main sequence, so experienced participants distinguish the warning signals from the chimes that mark the grapes.
Puerta del Sol is also famous for the Kilometer Zero plaque, a reference point for Spain’s radial road network. The New Year’s celebration is therefore tied to a specific civic square, not to Madrid’s entire city center or to Barcelona’s separate public festivities.