New Year's Eve is a really important day
of the year around the world and here in Spain we have some special traditions
to celebrate this day.
It is known that we love to go party hard,
but before that it is common to have dinner with your family and friends at
home, with typical dishes prepared for the occasion, similar to Thanksgiving in
America. When the New Year starts at 00:00, it is pretty much the same as in
the rest of the world.
The Grapes is the most typical tradition
on New Year’s Eve. While in the rest of the world they just do a countdown for
the last seconds of the year (and I don’t underestimate that, but dude it isn’t
as funny as our stupid grape thing…), here in Spain we have a full ceremony to
enter the new year.
In Puerta
Del Sol, a famous square in downtown Madrid, there’s a big clock that sets
the 12 Strokes of Midnight. That
moment is broadcasted in TV all over the country, except for the Canary
Islands, where there’s a difference of 1 hour, so they celebrate it later. With
each stroke, we eat one grape; with a period of 2-3 seconds between each (for
us to eat the grapes, obviously). When the twelfth one is eaten, the New Year has
begun.
We could say that without the grapes
tradition, the New Year’s Eve would be unfulfilled. The whole country stops to
do it and it is quite funny to receive the year with the mouth full of fruit, maybe
just to justify all the sweets you have eaten during the holidays...
(Some images will be added soon.)
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