Also called las doce uvas de la suerte, uvas de la suerte, 12 grapes at midnight
At midnight on New Year's Eve, eat one grape on each of the twelve clock strikes, one for each month, for a lucky year. It is the central New Year rite in Spain and much of Latin America.
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Take care: Grapes are a choking risk for young children; cut them into quarters or give children a slower version. Do not swallow a ring.
Many Spaniards wear red underwear for luck and drop a gold ring into their cava glass, drinking it after the grapes. The ring is said to bring wealth.
Uses: red clothing, gold ring, sparkling wine
In parts of Latin America people eat the grapes while sitting under the table, said to help find love, or make a wish with each one. Some carry an empty suitcase around the block for a year of travel.
Uses: grapes, suitcase
In the Philippines families set out twelve kinds of round fruit, whose shape recalls coins, alongside or instead of grapes.
Uses: twelve round fruits
A Madrid newspaper of 1 January 1896 shows grape-eating at midnight was already known by 1895. One account says Madrid's well-off families copied a French habit of grapes and champagne at New Year, and working people began eating grapes at the Puerta del Sol in mockery. That explanation is plausible but hard to prove. The better-known story is that in December 1909 growers in Alicante, after a huge harvest, promoted the custom to sell surplus grapes.
The rite gathered around the clock of the Real Casa de Correos in Madrid's Puerta del Sol, whose chimes were broadcast on radio and, from 1962, on Televisión Española. Today most of Spain eats grapes in front of that broadcast. The custom travelled to Latin America, the Philippines and Hispanic communities in the United States, often picking up local extras.
The first visitor to cross the threshold after midnight on New Year sets the household's luck for the year, so they arrive with gifts of coal, bread, salt and drink.
The table of seven symbolic items whose Persian names begin with S, set for the Persian new year at the spring equinox, with the fire-jumping of Chaharshanbe Suri before it and the release of the sprouts into running water on the thirteenth day after.
A bowl filled with grain, coins, herbs and a written intention, kept on a shelf and added to over time so wealth 'gathers' like the contents. The money-bowl form is modern, from the 2010s, with older full-vessel customs behind it.
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