12 GRAPES TO START THE YEAR WITH LUCK

This December 31st, as tradition dictates, millions of Spaniards will eat their grapes at midnight to say goodbye to the year and welcome the next one. This is how it happens every New Year's Eve, but where does this curious Spanish custom, which is widespread in many Latin American countries, come from?

There are two theories about the origin of this tradition. The first goes back to the 1880s. According to newspapers of the time, the Spanish bourgeois class, imitating the French, began to celebrate New Year's Eve by drinking champagne, accompanied by grapes, at private gatherings.

This tradition, seen by the rest of the Spanish population as a delicacy, was joined in time - December 1882 - by a proclamation issued by the then mayor of the capital, José Abascal y Carredano. This municipal document criticised and sanctioned certain noisy and rowdy activities by the people of Madrid during the Christmas season.

Annoyed by this decree, the Madrilenians decided to take to the streets and, taking as the opposite extreme to their situation the permitted feasts of the aristocracy, they opted to eat grapes in what is now Puerta del Sol on 31 December. It was a way of mocking the upper class and protesting against their permitted festivities.

The second theory places the origins a few decades later, in 1909. That year, producers in Alicante had a surplus harvest of white grapes of the typical local variety, called Aledo. In order to sell them, the farmers decided to distribute them and, in turn, to promote their consumption among the population.