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12 grapes for 12 bells: This is how the Spanish celebrate New Years

The age-old tradition throughout Spain is said to bring good luck for the year to come

It’s no secret that Spain is home to many weird and wacky traditions, but one time-honoured New Year’s Eve custom is making a come-back at the most trendy of celebrations: eating twelve grapes at the stroke of midnight. Superstition has it that if a person eats one grape for each chime of the bell, they will have a prosperous and lucky year, and let’s face it, after the trials faced over the last few years, everyone could do with a bit of good fortune.

Although the tradition has been passed down from generation to generation, there is much debate about its origins. One school of thought is that a few industrious farmers in Alicante came up with the idea in 1909 after they produced a bumper crop of fruit and were looking for ways to offload their surplus grapes.

Many people, however, believe that the custom started much earlier when the Spanish upper classes began to imitate the bourgeois French by eating fruit washed down with champagne on New Year’s Eve. Not to be outdone, the working men and women soon started flocking to the Puerto del Sol in Madrid to ring in the new year with their own grapes and sparkling wine.

Wherever it stemmed from, ‘las doce uvas de la suerte’ or ‘the twelve grapes of luck’ is a beloved tradition in Spain that has lasted through the ages. Nowadays, it is taken less seriously and more often than not devolves into a hilarious giggling session as each person struggles to choke down their grapes before the bells stop ringing.

But, a word of warning: legend has it that anyone who jumps the gun and starts eating the grapes before the first bell tolls will have bad luck for the entire year to come, so participate at your own risk, your 365 days of good fortune depends on it!

Image: Archive

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