What is the name of Spain's New Year's Eve custom of eating one grape with each midnight clock strike?

Spain’s New Year’s Eve custom of eating one grape with each midnight strike is called Las doce uvas de la suerte, or “the twelve grapes of luck.”

Participants try to eat twelve grapes, one for each stroke of the clock at midnight. Each grape represents a month of the coming year, and finishing them is associated with prosperity or good fortune. The custom is especially linked with the clock at Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, whose televised chimes are followed across Spain.

The tradition became widely popular in the early twentieth century. Accounts often connect its spread with Spanish grape growers who had a surplus harvest, although the custom may also have earlier elite or urban precedents. The exact origin is therefore discussed rather than completely settled.

The twelve grapes are not the same as the twelve chimes themselves: the chimes provide the timing, while the grapes provide the ritual. People commonly prepare peeled or seedless grapes because the sequence is fast.