Without realizing it December 31 It’s already around the corner again. On this special date, marked on all calendars, New Year’s Eve is celebrated and with it the passage towards a new year. In Spain, saying goodbye to the year with twelve grapes is a tradition, whether skinned, skinless, pitted, split or whole. It doesn’t matter what they are, what is the same in all houses is that the number must be twelve, one for each bell and for each monthwhich are taken in the last twelve seconds of the year. A little superstition and a little tradition, but, Do you really know what its origin is?
The origin of the 12 grapes on New Year’s Eve
The most widespread theory is that everything began late 19th century, era in which the bourgeois class of Madrid had the whim of eat grapes and drink cava. The reason for all this would be the French custom of having this fruit with a glass of champagne during the New Year’s Eve meal.
The story of how that ended up becoming a centuries-old tradition is said to have had to do with the prohibition by the Madrid City Council to celebrate the holidays in the streets of the town. This restriction caused a group of chulapos to gather in the only place they could, the Puerta del Sol, accompanied by the sound of the bells. So yes, you could say that the tradition of the twelve grapes comes from a rebellion.
The other theory is that this tradition has its origin in the year 1909 when the farmers of Alicante encountered a large surplus of grapes. Thus, given this abundance, they devised a strategy to promote the sale of grapes during the strokes of midnight, which later became popular and ended up being consolidated. However, this is a theory that seems unlikely, since the newspapers of 1882 were already talking about the twelve grapes, according to National Geographic. In this way, the conclusion is reached that this reason could simply be a push to a tradition that was already celebrated.
Furthermore, another fact that few know is that Spain is not the only one to eat the twelve grapesbut Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela also follow this tradition.
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