Last minute New Year’s Eve trip? 12 grapes in 12 seconds and churros for a hangover
Spain is the second most popular Christmas and New Year destination among our compatriots. If someone is planning a last-minute New Year’s Eve in the country beloved by Poles, we suggest: The most famous outdoor New Year’s Eve party takes place in Madrid, and the beach in Barcelona is also crowded. For summer temperatures you have to fly all the way to the Canary Islands. But fortunately, all of Spain shares a passion for bizarre New Year’s superstitions, with the grape countdown at the forefront.
It started at the end of the 19th century. The custom of drinking grape champagne during the Christmas and New Year period was popular among the wealthy inhabitants of Madrid, borrowed from the French elites. Many residents of the capital mocked this new tradition. They found her snobbish and simply ridiculous. Especially for a time when the working class was barely making ends meet.
One New Year’s Eve, a group of demonstrators gathered in Puerta del Sol, the city’s main square. They took grapes with them. Just before midnight, when the bell in the Post Office tower traditionally tolled each of the last twelve seconds of the year, they put one grape into their mouths.
They repeated their, as we would call it today, performance the following year. And in the following years. More and more people gathered at Puerta del Sol each New Year’s Eve. Among them were also representatives of the privileged class, which the demonstration was initially intended to target. The original purpose of the gathering – to ridicule bourgeois customs – became blurred. Eating twelve grapes in the last twelve seconds of the year paradoxically became a custom connecting various rungs of the Madrid social ladder.
